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King,  Henry  Churchill 

1934. 
Religion  as  life 


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RELIGION    AS    LIFE 


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THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON  ■    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  -   SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •   BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


NOV    1   1913 


RELIGION  AS   LIFE 


BY 

V 

HENRY  CHURCHILL  KING,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

PRESIDENT   OF   OBERLIN   COLLEGE 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 
1913 

All  rights   resewed 


Copyright,  1913, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  May,  1913. 


J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I.     The  Choice  of  Life     . 

PAGB 
3 

II. 

The  Method  of  Life  . 

.                .            36 

III. 

The  Realities  of  Life 

.             71 

IV. 

The  Sources  of  Life  . 

.         105 

V. 

The  Enemies  of  Life  . 

•         134 

VI. 

The  Essence  of  Life  . 

.         162 

RELIGION    AS    LIFE 


THE   CHOICE   OF   LIFE 

The  Peril  of  the  Lesser  Good 

If  one  is  to  do  justice  to  the  breadth  of 
human  nature,  he  may  not  forget  that 
there  are  always  two  questions  to  be  asked 
concerning  any  of  the  phenomena  of  the 
world  and  of  life :  How  did  it  come  to  be  ? 
What  does  it  mean  ?  —  the  question  of 
process,  of  mechanical  explanation,  and  the 
question  of  meaning,  of  ideal  interpreta- 
tion. And  men  cannot  help  asking  the 
second  question  as  well  as  the  first.  As 
Watts  says,  endeavoring  to  put  into  words 
the  constant  thought  back  of  all  his  own 
work  as  an  artist:  ''As  long  as  humanity 
is  htmianity,  man  will  yearn  to  ascend 
the  heights  that  himian  footsteps  may  not 
tread,  and  will  long  to  lift  the  veil  that 
shrouds  the  enigma  of  being ;  and  he  will 
most  prize  the  echo  of  this  longing  in  even 
the    incoherent    expression    of    literature, 


RELIGION  AS  LIFE 


music,  and  art."  The  ideal  interests  are 
here  all  at  one ;  for  they  all  seek  to  find 
meaning  in  life,  and  they  all  voice  an  under- 
lying faith,  which,  it  may  be  suspected, 
finds  its  natural  and  inevitable  culmination 
and  justification  in  religion.  One  probably 
has  nowhere  fathomed  the  mysterious  power 
of  beauty,  for  example,  until  he  finds  in  it, 
as  Lotze  has  suggested,  the  prophecy  and 
promise  of  final  and  universal  harmony  — 
an  essentially  religious  conviction. 

The  very  conception  of  religion  as  life, 
implies  that  religious  faith  is  thus  basic, 
and  has  the  power  everywhere  to  give 
meaning  and  value  to  life  ;  that  it  stands  in 
every  realm  for  the  largest,  richest,  most 
rewarding  life.  Even  when  religion  is  so 
conceived,  the  question  that  first  arises  is 
this :  Does  one  really  want  life,  the  largest 
life,  though  it  appear  in  the  guise  of  diffi- 
culty and  self-denial  ?  Does  one  decisively 
choose  it  with  his  whole  being  ?  —  the  ques- 
tion of  the  choice  of  life.  The  second  ques- 
tion then  follows :  Can  one  get  some  clear 
view  of  the  method  of  life,  and  see  here 
the  essential  unity  of  religion  with  all  life, 
in  the  double  demand  for  inner  integrity 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE 


and  fellowship  ?  That  method,  it  will  be 
found,  inevitably  includes  an  honest  facing 
of  the  facts  of  life,  a  thoughtful  recognition 
of  the  outstanding  realities  of  the  spiritual 
world.  Just  because  the  method  of  life 
includes,  also,  '  as  everywhere  requisite, 
fellowship,  men  are  driven  to  find  the  great 
sources  of  life,  short  of  God  himself,  in  the 
most  rewarding  personalities  of  the  moral 
and  religious  sphere,  and  so  to  give  special 
place  to  the  great  line  of  prophetic  seers  of 
the  spiritual,  culminating  in  Jesus.  But  the 
whole  range  of  the  moral  and  religious  life 
is  in  the  realm  of  personal  relations,  and  one 
has  not  fully  learned  the  lesson  of  the  life 
of  Jesus,  nor  squarely  faced  the  facts  of 
life,  until  he  has  confronted  the  enemies  of 
life  arising  out  of  these  personal  relations. 
This  darker  side  cannot  be  honestly  ignored. 
But  it  is  the  characteristic  message  of  the 
life  of  Jesus,  that  the  enemies  of  life  cannot 
finally  defeat  the  true  soul  in  its  quest  for 
the  largest  life  either  for  itself  or  for  others. 
In  clear  vision  of  the  darker  aspect  of  life, 
therefore,  religion  may  still  conceive  the 
great  outstanding  personalities  and  realities 
of  the  spiritual  realm  as  at  least  a  partial 


RELIGION  AS  LIFE 


revelation  of  the  will  of  God,  and  must  find 
the  essence  of  its  life  in  harmony  with  that 
will  of  God.  For  religion  must  ultimately- 
mean  some  real  sharing  in  the  life  of  God 
himself.  It  is  such  a  survey  of  religion  as 
life,  that  is  here  undertaken. 

Our  age  is  often  called  an  irreligious — 
an  unideal  —  age.  The  truth  of  the  state- 
ment may  well  be  doubted.  The  age  is  a 
realistic  age,  in  the  sense  that  it  wants  to 
know  that  everywhere  it  is  dealing  with 
reality  —  that  it  is  not  deceiving  itself 
with  even  the  fondest  of  delusions.  And 
from  that  test  religion  has  no  right  to  with- 
draw itself.  But  that  the  age  is  averse  to 
religious  life  and  faith  where  they  have 
the  ring  of  reality,  it  would  be  difficult 
indeed  to  show.  Men  cannot  so  easily 
escape  their  own  natures  and  the  grip  of 
their  own  birthright. 

The  seeming  declension  in  religious  faith 
is  probably  due  in  part  to  the  waning  power 
of  authority  in  the  religious  sphere,  because 
of  the  increasing  demand  in  this  realm,  as 
in  all  others,  for  the  verification  of  expe- 
rience. But  this  is,  in  truth,  an  evidence 
of    greater    not    less    earnestness    in    the 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE 


pursuit  of  religion.  For  it  is  a  refusal  to 
substitute  the  mere  say-so  of  some  other 
for  living  experience  on  one's  own  part. 
In  that  result  every  believer  in  the  insight 
of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  may  rejoice ;  for 
Jesus  sought  nothing  else  so  persistently 
as  this  utter  reality  in  the  spiritual  life. 
He  has  indeed  no  plea  to  make  for  any 
religion  that  does  not  mean  the  experience 
of  a  larger,  richer  life.  He  deliberately 
courts  that  test:  "I  came  that  they  may 
have  life,  and  may  have  it  abundantly." 
He  has  no  criticism  of  men's  thirst  for  life. 
He  only  has  pity  that  they  seek  to  satisfy 
the  thirst  at  such  unpromising  springs. 
He  could  not  have  objected  to  the  line  of 
argument  of  a  great  German  theologian, 
that  the  truth  of  rehgion  is  best  shown  by 
the  fact  that  it  alone  can  quite  satisfy 
men's  ''claim  on  life."  That  must  seem 
to  him  the  most  obvious  inference  from  his 
own  initial  faith  in  the  Father.  Life  — 
large  and  rich  and  free,  increasing,  inex- 
haustible life,  because  sharing  in  God's 
own  life  !  This,  religion  must  be  able  to 
offer,  if  it  is  to  abide.  For  man  cannot  give 
up   the  quest  for  life.     Can  religion   still 


RELIGION  AS  LIFE 


make  good  this  offer  even  for  the  modern 
man  ? 

All  forms  of  frivolity  and  passion,  even, 
think  of  themselves  as  seeking  life.  The 
men  who  yield  to  them  say  that  they  want 
to  ''see  life"  ;  that  they  want  to  ''live  while 
they  live."  And  there  is  a  certain  uncon- 
scious logic  in  their  claim ;  for  they  all 
seek  some  kind  of  emotional  excitement. 
Now  it  is  quite  true  that  one  cannot  get 
the  tang  of  reality  in  existence  without  some 
stirring  of  emotion.  None  of  us  has  any 
right  to  forget  this  close  and  inevitable 
connection  of  the  sense  of  reality  with 
jfeeling.  The  claim  of  feeling,  therefore, 
/cannot  be  ignored  by  any  interest  or  cause, 
however  ideal.  Unless  religion,  then,  has 
power  to  awaken  such  faith  and  hope  and 
love  as  insure  profounder  depths  of  feeling, 
as  are  able  to  make  all  the  natural  joys  of 
men  instinct  with  far  richer  meaning,  and 
as  can  give  permanent  satisfaction  to  the 
greatest  in  us,  it  must  fail. 

The  momentous  building  up  of  the  senti- 
ment of  romantic  love,  in  the  history  of 
western  civiHzation,  is  a  good  illustration 
of  the  way  in  which  ideal  interests  have 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE 


this  power  immensely  to  deepen  and 
heighten  natural  feeling.  And  romantic 
love  cannot  come  to  its  supreme  height 
without  full  religious  faith,  as  many  of  our 
best  love  songs  quite  unconsciously  testify. 
Now  exactly  the  kind  of  transformation 
that  the  ideal  interests  have  brought  about 
in  the  natural  attraction  of  the  sexes, 
religion  believes  that  it  can  bring  into 
every  part  of  life.  And  it  blames  the 
devotee  of  frivolity  and  passion,  because 
at  every  point  he  prefers  the  shallow  and 
fragmentary  and  steadily  lessening  and 
self -centered  life,  to  the  profounder  and 
larger  and  steadily  growing  and  all-em- 
bracing life  open  to  him.  It  sees,  there- 
fore, how  inevitable  was  the  yearning  pro- 
test which  the  old  Evangelist  put  into 
the  mouth  of  Christ:  "Ye  will  not  come/ 
unto  me  that  ye  may  have  life."  The' 
thing  that  so  stirs  the  soul  of  Jesus  is,  that 
men  are  so  constantly  striving  to  satisfy 
the  quenchless  thirst  for  life,  of  natures 
capable  of  endless  development,  with  at 
best  petty  goods.  So  Browning  in  his 
Easter  Day  sees  that  no  severer  judgment 
could  be  pronounced  upon  a  man,  willingly 


10  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

falling  below  the  best,  than  that  he  should 
be  permanently  shut  up  to  the  goals  he 
himself  has  chosen : 

The  austere  voice  returned,  — 
'  So  soon  made  happy  ?     Hadst  thou  learned 
What  God  accounteth  happiness. 
Thou  wouldst  not  find  it  hard  to  guess 
What  hell  may  be  his  punishment 
For  those  who  doubt  if  God  invent 
Better  than  they.     Let  such  men  rest 
Content  with  what  they  judged  the  best. 
Let  the  unjust  usurp  at  will ! 
The  filthy  shall  be  filthy  still ! 
Miser,  there  waits  the  gold  for  thee  ! 
Hater,  indulge  thine  enmity  ! 
And  thou,  whose  heaven  self -ordained 
Was,  to  enjoy  earth  unrestrained, 
Doit!' 

Now  the  gradual  building  up,  in  all  pro- 
gressive civilizations,  of  some  kind  of  ideal 
interests,  means  that  it  is  the  experience 
of  the  race  that  men  cannot  continuously 
get  more  life  without  deepening  life.  It 
is  a  necessarily  narrow  life  that  stays  on  a 
mere  sense  level.  The  choice  of  the  larger 
life  must  mean,  therefore,  just  such  steady 
deepening  of  life.  The  very  existence, 
indeed,   of  art,   of  science,   of  philosophy, 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  ii 

of  ethics,  of  sociology,  and  of  religion  is 
evidence  that  man  is  more  than  a  creature 
of  the  senses ;  that  it  belongs  to  his  very 
nature  to  set  aims  that  take  him  beyond 
the  sense  world  ;  that  each  of  these  achieve- 
ments is  an  ideal  which  man's  own  nature 
sets  before  him  for  accomplishment  —  is, 
in  Miinsterberg's  language,  "a  child  of 
duties."  From  the  point  of  view  of  re- 
ligion, therefore,  that  believes  in  God  as 
Creator  of  man,  body  and  soul,  these  ideals 
are  all  at  least  a  partial  revelation  of  the 
will  of  God  for  man ;  and  religion  may  be 
said  thus  to  take  up  into  itself  all  the  other 
ideals ;  arid,  alone  of  all  the  ideals,  to  give 
man's  life  the  permanent  meaning  of  re- 
lation to  the  Eternal.  The  religious  life, 
therefore,  should  give  the  greatest  deepen- 
ing of  life  possible. 

Our  own  time,  with  all  its  prodigious 
material  and  intellectual  achievements  and 
its  unequaled  material  development,  it- 
self seems  more  and  more  to  be  awaking 
to  the  fact  that  no  one  nor  all  of  these  are 
sufficient  of  themselves  to  give  meaning 
and  value  to  life.  The  world  never  had 
such    enormous    resources    of    power    and 


12  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

wealth  and  knowledge,  never  so  great 
means  of  all  kinds.  We  are,  indeed,  in 
danger  of  finding  our  lives  swamped  by 
the  very  magnitude  of  our  possessions. 
Just  because  our  resources  are  so  prodigious, 
there  is  the  indispensable  need  for  men  of 
spiritual  insight  and  vision  and  passion, 
men  of  assured  relation  to  God,  and  there- 
fore men  of  dynamic  power  to  guide  these 
stupendous  lower  forces  to  ideal  ends. 
Thoughtful  men,  thus,  seem  constrained 
increasingly  to  ask  themselves  whether 
the  age  is  to  be  great  enough  to  be  able  to 
make  these  stupendous  resources,  means 
indeed.  Eucken's  protest,  making  just  now 
so  wide  an  appeal,  is  surely  symptomatic 
of  the  time.  ''To  every  thinking  man," 
he  says,  "the  great  alternative  presents 
itself,  the  Either-Or.  Either  there  is  some- 
thing other  and  higher  than  this  purely 
humanistic  culture,  or  life  ceases  to  have 
:  any  meaning  or  value."  "Not  suffering," 
I  he  says  elsewhere,  "but  spiritual  destitu- 
tion is  man's  worst  enemy."  But  spiritual 
destitution  cannot  be  relieved  from  with- 
out. It  requires,  indispensably,  inner 
spiritual  activity,  growing  insight,  decision 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  13 

and  choice  on  one's  own  part.  Any  truly 
spiritual  view  of  life  must  therefore  put, 
as  Eucken  does,  this  free  choosing  and 
decision  in  the  foreground.  Even  the  in- 
tellectual inheritance  of  the  achievements  of 
modern  science  cannot  come  to  a  man  with- 
out earnest  labor  and  appropriation  on  his 
own  part.  Still  less  can  the  meaning  of  the 
spiritual  life  be  his  without  active  personal 
appropriation. 

It  is  not  by  accident,  therefore,  that  one 
is  led  to  put  at  the  very  beginning  of  any 
thoroughgoing  consideration  of  religion 
as  life,  the  choice  of  life,  —  and  that  choice 
as  made 'with  all  ethical  earnestness  and 
decision.  We  may  well  raise  the  question 
whether  our  time,  in  the  reaction  from  abuse 
of  mere  appeals  to  the  will  —  has  not  been 
ignoring  quite  too  much  the  strategic  place 
that  definite  and  avowed  decision  must 
have  in  the  development  of  the  spiritual  life. 
Dr.  Bushnell's  account  of  his  own  expe- 
rience may  suggest  how  vitally  important 
such  spiritual  decisions  may  be.  "A  kind 
of  leaden  aspect  overhangs  the  world. 
Till,  finally,  pacing  his  chamber  some  day, 
there    comes    up    suddenly    the    question, 


14  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

'  Is  there  then  no  truth  that  I  do  believe  ? ' 
'Yes,  there  is  this  one,  now  that  I  think  of 
it ;  there  is  a  distinction  of  right  and  wrong 
that  I  never  doubted,  and  I  see  not  how  I 
can;  I  am  even  quite  sure  of  it.'  Then 
forthwith  starts  up  the  question,  'Have 
I  then  ever  taken  the  principle  of  right 
for  my  law?  I  have  done  right  things  as 
men  speak ;  have  I  ever  thrown  my  life 
out  on  the  principle  to  become  all  it  re- 
quires of  me  ? '  '  No,  I  have  not,  con- 
sciously, I  have  not.  Ah  !  then,  here  is 
something  for  me  to  do  !  No  matter  what 
becomes  of  my  questions  —  nothing  ought 
to  become  of  them,  if  I  cannot  take  a  first 
principle,  so  inevitably  true,  and  live  in  it.' 
The  very  suggestion  seems  to  be  a  kind  of 
revelation.  It  is  even  a  relief  to  feel  the 
conviction  it  brings.  'Here,  then,'  he  says, 
*will  I  begin.'  "  That  striking  scene  in  the 
history  of  Israel,  in  the  Valley  of  Shechem, 
with  Israel  divided  into  the  two  groups  on 
Mount  Ebal  and  Mount  Gerizim,  to  re- 
spond, the  one  to  the  curses  and  the  other 
to  the  blessings,  between  which  they  are 
to  choose,  sets  forth  dramatically  the  per- 
petual challenge  to  humanity.     For  life  is 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  15 

constantly  saying,  as  there:  "I  have  set 
before  thee  Hfe  and  death,  the  blessing  and 
the  curse.  Therefore  choose  life  that  thou 
mayest  live."  No  man  chooses  a  curse  as 
such.  He  chooses  it  under  the  guise  of 
some  kind  of  good,  or  as  at  least  accom-^ 
panied  by  a  good  that  seems  to  him  to 
make  up  for  the  curse.  Man's  peril  is 
always,  therefore,  that  of  the  lesser  good. 
And  it  is  this  peril  that  demands  so  insis- 
tently the  choice  of  life. 

There  is  a  section  of  the  teaching  of 
Jesus,  in  a  single  chapter  in  Mark  (Mark 
10),  that  deals  with  exactly  this  peril  of 
the  lessor  good  in  three  of  the  common 
realms  of  life  :  the  realms  of  wealth,  of  love, 
and  of  ambition.  These  teachings  may  well 
challenge  our  attention  when  we  are  thinking 
of  what  it  really  means  to  choose  life. 

It  is  a  characteristically  compact  and 
vivid  picture  which  Mark  gives  of  the  young 
man  who  runs  to  Jesus,  as  he  is  going  out 
into  the  highway,  throws  himself  on  his 
knees  before  him,  out  of  the  consciousness 
of  a  clean  and  upright  life  voices  his  further 
aspiration  and  wins  from  Jesus  his  look  of 
love,  only  to  find  himself  unable  to  respond 


i6  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

to  Christ's  full  call  to  abandon  his  wealth 
and  follow  him,  and  goes  away  with  fallen 
countenance,  sorrowful. 

The  ordinary  reader  of  the  Gospel,  it 
may  be  suspected,  would  underwrite  this 
incident  of  the  rich  young  ruler  with  the 
subtitle,  ''A  Hard  Test."  Dante,  with 
keener  insight,  calls  it  ''The  Great  Refusal.'* 
For  it  is  exactly  this  common  inability  to 
see  that  the  failure  to  meet  the  hard  test 
is  a  great  refusal  of  life,  that  makes  life's 
tragedy.  We  see  the  hardness  of  the  test ; 
Jesus  and  Dante  see  the  greatness  of  the 
life  refused.  For  here,  in  this  New  Testa- 
ment incident,  is  the  appeal  of  eager,  beau- 
tiful, upright,  aspiring  youth.  Jesus  loves 
him  and  covets  for  him  a  far  greater  destiny 
than  he  has  yet  achieved  —  high  service 
in  his  kingdom.  But  the  young  man's 
riches  are  too  strong  for  his  aspiration.  He 
cannot  rise  to  the  height  of  Jesus'  call. 
Reluctantly,  indeed,  but  surely  he  puts  the 
great  opportunity  aside  —  for  it  was  the 
proffer  of  life  in  the  guise  of  self-denial. 
Not,  thus,  in  desperate  wickedness,  but  in 
simple  peril  of  the  lower  good,  he  makes 
"the  great  refusal." 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  17 

The  story  is  a  perpetual  parable  of  human 
struggle ;  for  life's  supreme  test  and  chal- 
lenge are  never  —  as  men  so  commonly 
think  —  Can  you  withstand  the  evil  ?  but 
rather,  Can  you  rise  superior  to  the  lower 
goods  ?  The  constant  struggle  is  between 
aspiration,  on  the  one  hand,  and  one's 
already  ''great  possessions,"  on  the  other. 
Everywhere  life  brings  the  challenge  of 
the  call  to  denial  of  the  lower;  the  soul 
responds  either  with  the  great  commit- 
ment or  ''the  great  refusal." 

This  figure  of  the  rich  young  ruler  is  one 
fit  to  stir  any  man  to  serious  thought. 
For  his  is" no  sordid  soul.  He  is  still  warmly 
touched  with  the  eager  aspiration  of  youth. 
The  spell  of  the  "great  possessions,"  it  is 
true,  is  already  on  him,  as  Christ  clearly 
sees  ;  but  it  has  not  yet  been  fully  wrought ; 
he  is  no  "swine  of  Circe"  who  does  not 
longer  care.  And  one  can  hardly  help 
imagining  a  different  issue  of  this  conversa- 
tion with  Christ.  Suppose  the  rich  young 
ruler  had  risen  to  the  occasion  and  the 
result  were  changed  ? 

The  test  which  Jesus  applies  seems  very 
severe  to  us,  with  our  modem  love  of  riches, 


i8  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

and  it  is  hard  enough.  But  his  ''great 
possessions"  were  all  too  evidently  coming 
to  own  him,  rather  than  he  to  own  them ; 
and  they  were  sure  to  corrode  his  life.  The 
question  which  Jesus  really  brought  to 
him  that  day  on  the  highway  was,  Have 
you  the  nerve,  the  grit,  the  simple,  plain, 
high  wisdom  to  cut  off  this  deeply  corroding 
element  that  is  eating  into  your  very  life  ? 

It  seems  a  hard  test.  But  suppose  he 
had  met  Christ's  challenge  and  followed 
him  positively,  to  play  such  a  part  as  Paul 
played  ?  Suppose  he  had  been  clear-sighted 
and  strong-souled  enough  to  enter  into  his 
supreme  opportunity?  Who  would  have 
pitied  him?  Would  he  have  needed  any 
one's  pity,  and  not  rather  had  deep  admira- 
tion and  the  envy  of  all  high  souls,  and 
given  heroic  inspiration,  and  have  become 
one  of  the  great  life-giving  forces  of  the 
world  ?  Something  like  that  he  had  before 
him.  Something  like  that  Jesus  offered 
him  that  day  in  the  guise  of  his  severe  test. 
In  soberest  reason,  were  his  "great  posses- 
sions" worth  the  price  he  paid?  Did  he 
not  make  "the  great  refusal"  ? 

It  is  a  hard  test  ?     Yes,  but  how  great 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  19 

the  opportunity  !  For  the  seeming  hard 
demand  —  the  call  for  sacrifice  in  the  uni- 
verse of  God  —  is  always  a  call,  could 
we  but  believe  it,  to  larger  life,  to  wider 
outlook,  to  more  permanent  service.  And 
life's  constant  question  is,  Are  you  equal 
to  the  call  ?  Can  you  rise  to  it  ?  Can  you 
meet  the  challenge  of  your  best  possibility  ? 
Or  must  you  be  "let  off "  ?  Can  you  so 
feel  the  appeal  of  the  greater  glory  as  to 
loosen  the  hold  of  the  lower  on  you  ?  Can 
you  escape  from  the  thralldom  of  the  in- 
ferior good  into  life  ?  We  have  great  as- 
pirations and  occasional  visions ;  have  we 
the  determination  to  follow  them  to  the 
end,  or,  with  fallen  countenance  and  sor- 
rowful spirit,  must  we  go  away  from  the 
uplands  of  life,  enchained  by  our  ''great 
possessions"  ? 

It  is  a  hard  test  ?  Yes,  but  were  the 
"great  possessions"  so  sure  a  blessing? 
Had  they  so  much  to  give  ?  Had  they 
rather  no  heavy  price  which  they  were 
certain  to  demand,  and  were  they  to  take 
it  out  of  the  young  man's  life  ?  It  is  this 
aspect  of  the  matter  that  is  so  forced  on 
Christ's   mind   as,  in   words   of    the   most 


20  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

solemn  warning,  he  comments  on  the  going 
away  of  the  rich  young  ruler. 

Three  times,  in  unmistakable  terms, 
Jesus  asserts  his  sense  of  the  tremendous 
peril  of  wealth.  ''How  hardly,"  he  says 
to  his  disciples,  "shall  they  that  have  riches 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God."  And  this 
solemn  warning  of  Jesus  we  are  ready  to 
treat  almost  as  a  joke.  We  are  ''willing," 
our  newspaper  paragraphers  say,  "  to  run 
the  risks  of  wealth."  But  let  no  man  think 
it  a  trifling  risk,  or  one  lightly  to  be  entered 
on.  For  the  danger  of  the  rich  young 
ruler,  we  may  be  pretty  certain,  is  one  of 
the  greatest  dangers  that  besets  our  own 
people  to-day,  nationally  and  individually. 
When  one  recalls  the  revelations  of  the 
recent  years,  beginning  with  the  insurance 
investigations,  and  remembers  the  shame- 
less willingness  disclosed  ever3nvhere  to 
sacrifice  public  interests  to  private  gain,  he 
cannot  doubt  the  magnitude  of  the  peril 
to  the  nation's  life. 

It  was  one  of  the  most  thoughtful  of 
American  editors  that  wrote  of  this  phase 
of  our  national  history :  ' '  That  we  are 
passing  through  a  great  moral  crisis  be- 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  21 


comes  every  day  more  clear.  That  crisis 
has  come  not  a  day  too  soon,  if  the  soul  of 
the  country  is  to  be  kept  alive ;  it  cannot 
be  too  severe  in  its  arraignment  of  baseness, 
too  thorough  in  the  punishment  it  inflicts, 
too  drastic  in  the  methods  of  cleansing  and 
reinvigoration  which  it  adopts.  There  has 
never  been  a  more  shocking  story  of  dis- 
honor told  among  any  people,  nor  one 
which  makes  the  reader  or  hearer  more 
indignant  or  ashamed.  In  whatever  direc- 
tion the  light  searches,  instantly  mean 
little  men  of  great  financial  position  come 
into  startling  light,  and  are  seen  managing 
affairs  wifh  great  financial  ability  but  with 
the  moral  ideas  of  semi-savages.  An  un- 
endurable moral  vulgarity  stamps  them 
as  men  of  large  brains  and  little  souls  ; 
capable  of  great  material  achievements, 
but  with  rudimentary  spiritual  development. 
On  this  group  of  betrayers  of  trusts  the 
great  mass  of  Americans  looked  first  with 
incredulity,  then  with  astonishment,  and 
lastly  with  deepening  indignation.  Sound 
at  heart,  but  dull  with  prosperity,  and 
overtaken  by  a  kind  of  moral  sleeping  sick- 
ness, the  Nation  opens  its  eyes,  looks  about 


22  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

with  dismay,  and  gathers  its  forces  for  a 
passionate  fight  against  the  vices  that  have 
brought  shame  and  disaster  to  it." 

And  since  those  words  were  written,  how 
heavy  has  been  the  price  paid  in  dishonor 
for  simple  greed  for  gold  by  a  long  list  of 
men,  who  had  been  held  in  public  esteem 
—  some  of  them  high  in  religious  councils. 
It  is  a  list  to  make  a  man  sick  at  heart. 
Was  the  money  worth  the  price  ?  How 
surely  this  passionate  pursuit  of  wealth  be- 
comes soul-absorbing,  blinding  the  eyes, 
paralyzing  the  higher  powers,  blunting  the 
sense  of  honor,  a  veritable  disease  and  in- 
sanity, without  compensating  reward  and 
without  worthy  goal !  And  how  almost 
certainly  must  children  be  sacrificed  in  the 
process!  Unless  wealth  is  subdued  by 
higher  ends  as  only  a  subordinate  good, 
unless  it  is  made  means  in  very  truth,  it 
insures  not  enlarging  but  steadily  lessening 
life ;  we  have  been  defeated  by  the  peril  of 
the  lower  attainment. 

Our  whole  age,  as  we  have  seen,  has 
peculiar  dangers  at  just  this  point,  because 
of  the  very  magnitude  of  its  resources. 
Prodigious  material  prosperity  is  with  us 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  23 

—  and  it  is  a  good  beyond  doubt  —  pro- 
digious enough  to  blind  and  smother  all. 
It  is  not  strange  that  we  are  a  little  dizzy- 
headed.  But  its  challenge  is  unmistakable. 
We  cannot  evade  it.  Can  we  stand  it  ? 
Or  must  we  be  drowned  by  it  ?  Can  we 
save  our  lives  ?  Are  we  great  enough,  as 
a  nation,  to  make  the  material,  means  only, 
to  use  it  for  high  service  ?  If  so,  only 
ideals  and  enterprises  great  enough  and 
spiritual  enough  to  dominate  these  gigantic 
material  interests  can  save  us  here.  We 
have  no  choice. 

But  the  peril  of  the  lesser  good  is  not  to 
be  found  In  the  pursuit  of  wealth  alone. 
And  in  his  record  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus, 
Mark  puts  side  by  side  with  the  perils  of 
wealth,  the  perils  of  a  false  love,  and  the 
perils  of  a  false  ambition.  For  "the  great 
refusal"  is  nowhere  refusal  to  refuse  some- 
thing else,  refusal  to  cut  off,  refusal  to  give 
up  something  of  life  —  as  the  call  of  re- 
ligion is  so  commonly  conceived.  Rather, 
it  is  ''the  great  refusal"  just  because  it 
is  refusal  of  the  highest  good,  the  refusal 
of  life,  of  service,  of  the  greater  glory. 
Subordinating  the  lower  good  is  no  end  in 


24  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

itself ;  it  is  only  the  means  to  making  the 
highest  dominant.  The  method  of  Jesus, 
therefore,  is  nowhere  a  merely  negative 
cutting  off,  but  the  method  of  life,  of  growth, 
of  positive  heroic  achievement. 

In  his  teaching  concerning  divorce,  thus, 
Jesus  seeks  to  raise  the  whole  conception  of 
marriage  to  a  higher  plane.  To  him, 
marriage  meant  infinitely  more  than  to  the 
Pharisees,  with  their  loose  ideas  of  divorce ; 
more  than  to  us  Americans,  with  our 
shameful  record  here,  also,  of  practical  un- 
blushing trading  in  husbands  and  wives. 
I  do  not  forget  that  this  record  of  divorce 
bears  witness  at  many  points  to  a  deepening 
sense  of  the  respect  due  to  a  person.  But 
still,  I  cannot  doubt  that  we  need,  as  a 
nation,  to  hear  and  to  heed  Charles  Wag- 
ner's protest,  —  ''All  of  us  have  need  to 
regain  respect  for  love";  and  Tennyson's 
indignant  witness,  —  ''I  would  pluck  my 
hand  from  a  man  even  if  he  were  my  greatest 
hero,  or  dearest  friend,  if  he  wronged  a 
woman  or  told  her  a  lie";  and  Ruskin's 
clear  judgment,  —  ''Every  virtue  of  the 
higher  phases  of  manly  character  begins 
in    this :     in    truth    and    modesty    before 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  25 

the  face  of  all  maidens ;  in  truth  and 
pity  or  truth  and  reverence  to  all  woman- 
hood." 

Now  it  is  quite  true  that  any  pleasurable 
emotion  at  the  height  of  its  intensity  does 
seem  for  the  moment  to  be  its  own  excuse 
for  being.  It  may  often  honestly  seem 
justified  forthwith,  and  be  inclined  to  scout 
all  other  considerations  in  the  powerful 
sweep  of  its  passion.  It  can  then  say  with 
mistaken  pride,  in  the  words  of  a  poet  of 
the  day : 

Be  thine  that  white  engendered  spark, 

And  nought  can  feed  it,  nought  can  make  it  less. 

Virtue  and  vice,  nobility  and  shame 

Are  rags  that  drop  away,  while  you  sweep  on 

Stripped  as  a  flame,  with  arms  about  your  star. 

No  doubt  there  is  a  natural  reaction  of  the 
soul,  eager  to  test  the  full  meaning  of  life, 
against  the  tame  limitations  of  the  conven- 
tional and  prudential,  that  may  often  make 
one  feel  like  saying  with  Walt  Whitman : 

Oh  for  something  pernicious  and  dread, 
Something  far  away  from  a  puny  and  pious  life, 
Something  unproved,  something  in  a  trance. 
Something  escaped  from  the  anchorage  and  driving 
free. 


26  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

But  nevertheless,  let  not  one  lose  the  dis- 
tinction which  belongs  to  him  as  man,  of 
being  able  to  think,  to  discriminate,  to 
exercise  his  kingly  power  of  self-control, 
and  not  be  swept  off  his  feet  in  any  realm 
by  mere  tempest  of  feeling.  This  is  indeed 
just  what  should  distinguish  the  civilized 
man  from  the  barbarian.  Th.e.  thoughtful 
man  is  likely  to  have  a  sense  of  disgust 
when  the  novelists  begin  to  talk  about  the 
"red  blood"  of  the  hero,  just  when  he  is 
most  disgracing  himself ;  as  though  it  did 
not  require  far  more  grit  to  conquer  passion 
than  to  yield  to  it. 

Now,  what  are  this  ''virtue  and  vice," 
this  ''nobility  and  shame,"  that  are  to 
"drop  away  like  rags"  as  one  yields  to  the 
onrush  of  passion  ?  They  stand,  it  is  well 
simply  to  remember,  for  the  deepest  dis- 
criminations that  the  human  race  in  its 
development  has  been  able  id  mk^e.  They 
concern  the  eternal  loyalties  upon  which  all 
conceivable  decent  society  must  be  based. 
Love  cannot  be  this  heedless,  utterly  selfish, 
reckless,  treacherous,  and  spoiled  thing 
here  represented,  and  be  love  at  all,  or 
remain  love  at  its  best,  even  for  one,  though 
that  one  be  called  a  "star." 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  27 

If  we  are  to  come  to  the  largest  life  in 
this  realm,  we  need  to  come  up  to  the  high 
call  of  Christ's  thought  of  marriage.  And 
when  he  thought  of  marriage,  he  thought 
of  an  unselfish,  reverent  love,  that  made  it 
forever  impossible  for  a  man  to  treat  a 
wife  as  a  thing,  as  property  to  be  kept  or 
bartered  at  will.  He  thought  of  a  deep 
and  sacred  and  lasting  community  of  soul 
with  soul.  He  thought  of  marriage  as  no 
mere  compact  of  two  individuals,  dissoluble 
on  any  caprice,  but  as  a  solemn  covenant 
with  society  and  with  God,  fraught  with 
interests  precious  beyond  all  estimate.  And 
so  he  must  say:  ''What  God  hath  joined 
together,  let  not  man  put  asunder."  Jesus 
does  not  chide  men  that  they  love  too  much, 
but  that  they  love  too  little.  His  appeal 
is  an  appeal  to  rise  to  the  possibilities  of 
the  most  intimate  of  himian  relationships. 
He  sees  in  marriage,  physically  based 
though  it  is,  the  possibility  of  a  high  friend- 
ship that  can  steadily  transcend  the  physical 
and  last  beyond  it.  In  effect  he  says : 
"Do  not  throw  away  the  best  and  most 
sacred  thing  in  your  life  for  a  passing  desire. 
Do  not  make  impossible  the  sweetest  and 


28  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

highest,  that  shall  grow  with  your  growth, 
deepening  as  your  life  deepens,  a  love  be- 
yond all  aging,  of  eternal  quality,  knit  up 
indissolubly  with  all  that  is  best  in  you." 
It  is  such  a  love  that  Mrs.  Browning  has 
worthily  conceived,  and  that  one  may  dare 
to  place  beside  the  other  conception  of  love 
as  ineffably  more  significant  and  worthy 
and  satisfying,  a  love  of  which  a  man  has 
no  need  to  be  ashamed  in  any  hour. 

How  do  I  love  thee  ?     Let  me  count  the  ways, 

I  love  thee  to  the  depth  and  breadth  and  height 

My  sold  can  reach,  when  feeling  out  of  sight 

For  the  ends  of  Being  and  ideal  Grace. 

I  love  thee  to  the  level  of  every  day's 

Most  quiet  need,  by  sun  and  candlelight. 

I  love  thee  freely,  as  men  strive  for  Right ; 

I  love  thee  purely,  as  they  turn  from  Praise. 

I  love  thee  with  the  passion  put  to  use 

In  my  old  griefs,  and  with  my  childhood's  faith. 

I  love  thee  with  a  love  I  seemed  to  lose 

With  my  lost  saints  —  I  love  thee  with  the  breath, 

Smiles,  tears,  of  all  my  life  !  —  and,  if  God  choose, 

I  shall  but  love  thee  better  after  death. 

Here,  too,  is  to  be  found  the  peril  of  the 
lower  attainment  —  of  "the  great  refusal," 
that  cannot  discern  under  the  demand  for 
seeming  self-denial  the  call  to  larger  life. 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  29 

How  desperately  have  men  sought  here 
what  they  called  freedom  and  found  only 
slavery,  and  fought  as  slavery  the  highest 
freedom. 

And  ambition,  too,  has  its  peril  of  the 
lower  attainment.  The  two  disciples  who 
came  seeking  for  themselves  the  chief  places 
in  Christ's  kingdom,  are  met  with  his 
sobering,  chilling  challenge:  "Ye  know 
not  what  ye  ask.  Are  ye  able  to  drink 
the  cup  that  I  drink,  or  to  be  baptized  with 
the  baptism  that  I  am  baptized  with?" 
You  are  very  ambitious.  Is  your  ambition 
great  enough  ?  Do  you  really  aspire  to 
sacrificial  'service  ?  They  make,  it  is  true, 
the  highest  prayer:  "Grant  unto  us  that 
we  may  sit,  one  on  thy  right  hand,  and  one 
on  thy  left  hand,  in  thy  glory."  But  they 
do  not  highly  mean  it.  For  they  have  no 
desire  to  share  Christ's  real  glory. 

It  is  the  picture  of  all  ambitious  self- 
seeking,  always  misconceiving  true  great- 
ness. We  find  it  hard  to  rid  ourselves  of 
the  notion  that  glory  lies  in  conspicuousness, 
and  is  measured  by  large  financial  returns. 
We  easily  persuade  ourselves  that  the  more 
conspicuous  and  the  better  rewarded  place 


30  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

is  the  place  of  greater  service.  And  yet 
so  judging,  one  may  have  given  up  the 
larger  service  and  taken  the  poorer  op- 
portunity. He  may  have  given  up  his  own 
highest  growth  and  consented  to  do  the 
cheaper  kind  of  work,  thinner,  less  quicken- 
ing, dealing  more  with  externals  and  or- 
ganization, and  less  with  personal  life, 
serving  men  in  less  vital  ways,  and  giving 
less  of  his  own  best  life.  For  the  peril  of 
ambition  is  like  the  peril  of  riches,  every- 
where challenging  you  with  the  question 
in  the  midst  of  it,  Can  you  save  your  life  ? 
Can  you  keep  deep  the  zest  of  work  ?  Can 
you  keep  unselfish  love  in  yourself  and 
others?  Can  you  keep  taking  in  great 
draughts  of  life,  knowing  how  to  ''take  time 
to  be  alone"  and  to  "be  silent  unto  God"  ? 
The  peril  of  the  driven,  conspicuous  life 
is  great,  for  it  is  likely  to  find  all  too  little 
leisure  or  desire  to  think,  or  to  pray,  or  to 
live  deeply,  —  to  make  sure  that  it  has  a 
worthy  self  to  give.  Can  you  stand  it  ? 
Can  you  maintain  in  it  the  highest  service  ? 
If  God  lays  it  on  you,  you  must  bow  under 
it,  and  go  humbly  forward  in  deep  sense  of 
the    need    of    God.     But    ''seekest    thou 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  31 

great  things  for  thyself?  Seek  them  not.*' 
Such  places  may  give  great  opportunity, 
in  the  chance  to  bring  about  the  control  of 
great  ideals  in  wider  spheres.  But  they 
have  this  opportunity  only  for  the  man  who 
can  withstand  the  "devastator  of  the  day" 
—  only  for  the  man  who  is  making  steady, 
earnest  fight  for  time  to  grow,  to  be  his  best 
self.  For  the  only  deliverance  from  the 
glamour  and  corrosive  power  of  the  selfish 
ambition  is  the  still  mightier  power  of  the 
glory  of  unselfish  ambitions,  wide  as  the 
kingdom  of  God.  And  the  peril  here,  too, 
to  be  feared  above  all,  is  "the  great  re- 
fusal," the  peril  of  the  lower  attainment, 
the  danger  that  the  meaner  and  smaller 
ambitions  may  thwart  the  greater. 

For  he  has  dealt  very  superficially  with 
the  teaching  of  Jesus,  who  has  failed  to 
find  in  it,  in  the  face,  apparently,  of  certain 
and  absolute  defeat,  the  simple,  calm  in- 
sistence upon  the  sole  omnipotence  of  self- 
sacrificing  love  as  the  law  of  life  and  the 
way  to  glory.  It  is  his  central,  fundamental, 
revolutionary,  distinctive  principle,  of  which 
the  plain  historical  results  of  his  own  cross 
and  of  even  the  very  partial  practice  of  his 


32  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

teaching  are  the  proof.  The  future  belongs 
"to  the  Lamb  that  hath  been  slain."  The 
spirit  of  self -giving  is  on  the  throne  of  the 
universe.  But  have  men  ever  really  taken 
it  in  ?  Do  we  really  believe  that  now  and 
forever,  for  self  and  for  others,  for  character 
and  influence  and  happiness,  for  this  world 
and  for  the  next,  the  one  great  supreme 
condition  of  greatness,  under  a  self-sacri- 
ficing God,  is  service,  —  self -giving  ?  Here 
lies  the  only  Godlike  life,  the  only  way  to 
glory.  And  we  are  just  so  far  saved,  we 
have  just  so  far  learned  the  lesson  of  life, 
we  have  just  so  far  reached  the  end  of  our 
being,  as  we  have  learned  the  lesson  of 
love  —  of  self-sacrificing  service.  To  turn 
from  this  is  ''the  great  refusal"  —  the  losing 
of  one's  life. 

Thus  it  is,  that  day  after  day,  the 
thoughtful  man  feels  like  saying  to  those 
whom  he  most  loves  :  I  sum  up  all  my  desires 
for  you  in  the  single  prayer,  that  you  may 
be  kept  from  the  peril  of  the  lesser  good. 
I  do  not  much  fear  that  you  will  be  swept 
into  outbreaking  evil ;  I  do  fear  that  you 
will  fall  under  the  spell  of  the  lesser  goods. 
I  am  not  anxious  concerning  your  success 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  33 

as  men  count  success ;  I  am  anxious  lest 
the  smaller  success  jeopardize  the  greater. 
I  do  not  expect  you  to  prove  arrant  cowards  ; 
but  I  dread  for  you  that  subtler  cowardice 
that  cannot  choose  largeness  of  life  in  the 
guise  of  self-denial.  I  would  not  keep  you 
from  all  sorrow,  if  I  could,  for  that  were  to 
shut  you  out  of  life  itself  ;  but  I  would  save 
you  from  the  sorrow  of  high  aspiration 
defeated  by  ' '  great  possessions ' '  —  the  deep 
and  abiding  sorrow  of  ''the  great  refusal." 
I  could  covet  for  you  the  vision  of  all  life's 
values ;  but  though  your  eyes  be  holden 
to  every  lesser  value,  may  they  not  fail 
to  catch  the  vision  of  ''the  Hfe  that  is  life 
indeed."  I  expect  from  you  great  con- 
victions along  many  lines ;  but  underlying 
them  all  may  there  be  the  conviction  of 
convictions,  that  if  God  is  such  a  God  at 
all  as  Jesus  revealed,  then  plainly  the  hard 
test  is  always  a  call  to  Hfe,  the  demand  for 
service  and  sacrifice,  always  an  invitation 
to  share  the  Hfe  of  God  himself  in  his  highest 
glory  and  blessedness. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  of  those  who 
are  entering  active  life  to-day,  that  it  is 
their  privilege  to  come  to  it  in  a  new  period 


34  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

of  the  world,  when  new  standards  are 
already  set  up.  Under  these  new  standards, 
they  may  count  upon  it,  the  tribute  of 
greatness  is  increasingly  certain  to  be  denied 
to  the  man  who  has  not  mastered  his  own 
flesh,  who  has  not  mastered  his  possessions, 
who  has  not  mastered  his  selfish  ambitions. 
Steadily  there  is  being  pressed  home  upon 
men  the  imperative  demand  for  reverent 
personal  relations  everywhere.  Steadily  is 
growing  the  conviction  that  the  man  whose 
income  surpasses  the  service  he  renders  is 
not  to  be  envied,  for  he  has  not  earned 
what  he  has,  and  an  unearned  "special 
privilege"  is  not  an  honor  but  a  disgrace. 
Steadily  upon  even  the  selfishly  ambitious 
is  borne  in  the  persuasion  that  ''whoso- 
ever would  be  first  among  you  shall  be 
servant  of  all." 

Within  the  lifetime  of  those  entering 
active  life  to-day,  it  may  be  confidently 
expected  that  the  same  great  powers  that 
are  now  employed  so  largely  in  the  building 
up  of  private  fortunes  and  of  selfish  am- 
bitions, will  be  dedicated  far  more  gener- 
ally to  transcendent  public  service  and  to 
the    world-wide    interests    of    the    coming 


THE  CHOICE  OF  LIFE  35 

civilization  of  brotherly  men.  In  the  bring- 
ing on  of  that  new  and  better  time,  when 
love  and  wealth  and  ambition  shall  take 
on  their  true  honor,  because  they  have 
risen  to  their  highest  possibilities,  the  true 
man  must  hope  to  have  his  share. 

We  ask  for  life  ;  God  answers  with  larger 
life.  ''He  asked  life  of  thee,  thou  gavest 
it  him ;  even  length  of  days  forever  and 
ever."  All  real  life  begins  with  the  choice 
of  the  larger  life. 


II 

THE   METHOD   OF   LIFE 
The  Way  into  Life's  Values 

If  one  has  honestly  faced  the  challenge 
of  his  existence,  and  is  ready  to  make  the 
decisive  choice  of  life,  in  the  preference 
ever  for  the  larger  life,  the  question  still 
remains:  How  is  one  to  come  actually 
into  this  larger  life  ?  What  is  the  way 
into  life's  values  ?     What  is  life's  method  ? 

It  is  one  of  the  chief  ends  of  education 
to  enable  one  to  enter  with  conviction  and 
appreciation  into  the  great  spheres  of  value  ; 
into  aesthetic  and  intellectual  and  spiritual 
ideals ;  into  the  beautiful,  the  true,  and 
the  good :  into  music,  and  literature,  and 
art ;  into  the  scientific,  the  historical,  and 
the  philosophic  spirit ;  into  the  riches  of 
friendship  ;  into  moral  and  religious  ideals. 
Now  it  is  particularly  suggestive  that  it 
may  be  said  that  the  way  into  all  these 
values  of  life  is  essentially  the  same  way. 

36 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  37 

For  to  see  that  this  is  the  case,  brings  to 
one  anew  the  sense  of  the  singular  unity 
and  simpHcity  of  Hfe,  and  helps  one  to  dis- 
cern the  great  direction  for  significant 
living. 

One  may  approach  the  matter  from 
several  angles  with  a  like  result.  First 
of  all,  the  fact  that  the  Master  of  the  art 
of  living  conceives  of  his  disciples  as  ''the 
salt  of  the  earth,"  suggests  at  once  the 
ruling  method  of  life.  His  method  is 
simplicity  itself  —  keeping  a  few  men  in 
companionship  with  himself,  until  they 
catch  his  spirit  and  so  become  fitted  in 
their  turn  to  become  centers  of  life  for 
others.  His  words,  —  ''Ye  are  the  salt  of 
the  earth :  but  if  the  salt  have  lost  its 
savor,  wherewith  shall  it  be  salted?"  — 
asstmie  two  things :  the  method  of  the 
contagion  of  the  good  life ;  the  indispen- 
sableness  of  the  integrity  of  the  individual 
spirit. 

The  words  of  Jesus  find  only  an  accurate 
modern  echo  in  Herrmann's  deep-going 
summary  of  the  moral  law:  "Mental 
and  spiritual  fellowship  among  men,  and 
mental  and  spiritual  independence  on  the 


38  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

part  of  the  individual,  that  is  what  we  can 
ourselves  recognize  to  be  prescribed  to  us 
by  the  moral  law.  Each  of  the  two  is  a 
particular  expression  of  what  is  morally 
good.  We  ought  at  every  moment  to  make 
the  rule  of  our  conduct  this  :  Thou  shouldst 
throw  thy  whole  being  into  the  effort  to 
attain  the  profoundest  and  most  far-reach- 
ing fellowship  with  other  men  that  is  pos- 
sible ;  and  at  the  same  time  this  also : 
Thou  shouldst  be  inwardly  independent, 
and  in  virtue  of  that  truly  alive.  Both  of 
these  propositions  go  together.  For  only 
by  willing  what  we  ourselves  recognize 
to  be  eternally  the  final  aim  of  all  things 
can  we  regard  ourselves  as  independent 
beings,  and  so  as  free  masters  of  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  our  existence  is  placed. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  mental  and  spiritual 
fellowship  which  we  are  obliged  to  con- 
ceive of  as  the  final  aim  is  possible  only 
among  independent  beings.  For  whoever 
lacks  inward  independence  has  nothing  in 
him  that  he  can  give  to  others.  In  that 
case  he  may  indeed,  as  a  thing,  serve  as  a 
means  employed  by  others.  He  renders 
this  service  even  without  taking  any  notice 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  39 

of  it.  He  means  to  exploit  others  and  is 
being  exploited  by  others.  Fellowship  with 
them  he  can  have  none." 

The  analogy  of  esthetic  appreciation, 
as  we  shall  see,  would  bring  us  finally  to 
the  same  two  indispensable  elements :  fel- 
lowship and  honesty.  The  method  of 
modem  science,  too,  is  essentially  identical. 
For  all  scientific  progress  involves  the  co- 
operation of  scientific  workers,  but  requires 
at  the  same  time,  if  this  cooperation  is  to 
be  of  any  value,  honest  independence  on 
the  part  of  each  worker.  We  can  be  very 
sure  that  we  are,  therefore,  coming  here 
close  to  the  secret  of  life  in  all  its  ranges. 
The  method  of  life  is  the  method  of  fellow- 
ship and  of  utter  inner  integrity. 

In  the  first  place,  one  is  not  prepared 
to  come  into  any  of  the  great  values  of  life 
without  dealing  honestly  with  himself  in 
the  sphere  in  which  he  seeks  achievement, 
whether  the  values  are  those  of  music,  or 
art,  or  literature,  or  of  scientific  or  philo- 
sophical appreciation,  or  of  friendship,  or  of 
moral  and  religious  ideals.  In  every  case, 
any  element  of  pretense  is  a  positive  hin- 
drance.   The  value  of  all  possible  fellowship 


40  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

depends  on  such  honesty,  such  integrity 
of  spirit.  For  that  my  fellowship  with 
another  who  has  preceded  me  in  the  ap- 
preciation of  aesthetic  or  spiritual  values 
should  be  of  worth  to  me  at  all,  on  his  part 
there  must  be  honest  testimony  concerning 
what  he  has  himself  found,  and  on  my  part 
there  must  be  no  pretense  of  sharing  what 
I  have  not  yet  come  to  share.  One  cannot 
build  solidly  on  sham  anywhere,  and  pre- 
tense in  one's  own  original  experience  or 
in  one's  testimony  concerning  his  experience 
alike  prevents  real  growth. 

If  I  am  to  reach,  for  example,  genuine 
musical  appreciation  of  my  own,  I  may  not 
allow  myself  idly  to  echo  others'  opinions 
that  either  grow  out  of  insights  that  I  do 
not  have,  or  bear  witness  to  experiences  I 
have  not  yet  attained.  We  are  all  tempted 
to  take  our  values  more  or  less  second- 
hand, because  we  shrink  from  both  the 
intellectual  effort  and  the  inner  honesty 
required  to  get  them  first-hand.  Mental 
and  moral  laziness  is  an  immense  hindrance. 
The  discerning  musical  critic  has  m.uch  to 
give  us,  if  we  will  use  honestly  what  he 
brings.     But  he  will  only  hinder  our  own 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  41 

growth  in  musical  appreciation,  if  he  does 
not  bring  us  to  a  point  where  we  can  see 
for  ourselves  and  feel  for  ourselves  some- 
thing at  least  of  what  he  points  out.  When 
one  of  my  friends,  more  honest  than  most, 
reached  in  his  travels  the  Sistine  Chapel 
at  Rome,  to  take  in,  if  he  might,  the  glories 
of  Michael  Angelo's  ceiling  frescoes,  he  had 
to  admit  a  great  sense  of  disappointment. 
But  he  did  not  hastily  conclude  that  the 
fault  was  all  Michael  Angelo's ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  was  not  willing  simply 
with  sham  enthusiasm  to  catch  up  the 
opinions  of  the  critics.  While  he  availed 
himself,  therefore,  of  the  help  of  the  best 
authorities,  he  insisted  on  coming  back 
day  after  day  until  he  could  feel  that  he 
himself  had  come  into  some  honest  ap- 
preciation of  his  own  of  the  beauty  and 
majesty  of  the  figures  and  ideas  there 
portrayed. 

The  same  law  holds  even  more  clearly 
in  the  realm  of  scientific  appreciation.  It 
is  the  very  essence  of  the  scientific  spirit 
that  one  should  see  straight,  should  report 
exactly,  should  give  an  absolutely  honest 
reaction  upon  the  situation  in  which  he 


42  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

finds  himself.  Without  this  complete  hon- 
esty there  is  no  scientific  facing  of  the  facts 
at  all.  And  it  is,  I  suppose,  just  this  utter 
integrity  of  the  inner  spirit  that  Jesus  has 
in  mind  when  he  says,  "  If  the  salt  have  lost 
its  saltness,  wherewith  shall  it  be  salted  ?" 

Insight  in  any  sphere,  that  is,  must  be 
genuinely  our  own  or  nothing  is  accom- 
plished. Insight,  appreciation,  conviction, 
decision,  ideal,  hope  —  all  these  have  no 
meaning  at  all  if  they  are  simply  words 
caught  up  from  another,  and  have  not 
become  realities  in  our  own  experience. 
The  one  thing  that  life  cannot  stand  any- 
where is  sham.  And  where  one  consents 
in  any  measure  to  pretense  at  any  point  in 
the  supposed  pursuit  of  life,  he  has  really 
abandoned  the  method  of  life  and  involved 
himself  in  inevitable  self-contradiction. 

And  as  there  must  be  honesty  in  the 
original  experience,  so  too  there  must  be 
a  like  honesty,  as  has  been  already  sug- 
gested, in  all  testimony  to  one's  experience. 
There  must  be  no  careless  handing  on,  in 
any  of  the  realms  of  life,  of  what  we  have 
not  ourselves  verified.  The  literary  or 
art    or   musical    critic,    the    scientist,    the 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  43 

friend,  the  moral  or  spiritual  prophet,  who 
speaks,  as  out  of  his  own  insight,  what  he 
has  only  caught  up  from  another,  is  him- 
self a  fraud,  and  cannot  help  another  into 
reality  of  life.  The  whole  history  of  human 
thought,  however,  illustrates  how  often 
it  has  happened  that  men  have  taken  up 
without  verification  the  opinion  of  some 
supposed  authority,  to  hand  it  on,  some- 
times for  generations,  to  have  it  finally 
challenged  by  some  honest  soul  and  proved 
utterly  without  foundation. 

Modern  thought  confirms,  thus,  in  many 
ways,  Jesus'  conception  of  unreality  as  a 
root  peril  in  every  realm  of  life.  And  Jesus 
has  no  words  so  scorching  as  those  which  he 
aims  at  hypocrisy,  fundamental  falseness. 
Certain  great  notes  of  reality,  therefore, 
come  out  repeatedly  in  the  teaching  of 
Jesus. 

First  of  all,  Jesus  builds  —  as  he  must  if 
true  to  man's  nature  —  directly  on  the 
principle  of  the  unity  of  the  inner  life. 
He  knows  that  the  whole  life  of  a  man 
tends  inevitably  and  persistently  to  unity, 
to  logical  consistency ;  that  any  attitude 
persisted  in  tends  to  permeate  the  entire 


44  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

spirit  of  the  life,  for  good  or  for  evil,  as  the 
case  may  be.  ''If  thine  eye  be  single,  thy 
whole  body  shall  be  full  of  light,"  he  says, 
"but  if  thine  eye  be  evil,  thy  whole  body 
shall  be  full  of  darkness ;  if,  therefore,  the 
light  that  is  in  thee  be  darkness,  how  great 
is  the  darkness."  The  false,  the  selfish,  the 
prejudiced  taint  manifested  at  any  point, 
affects  the  whole  life.  And  just  as  surely, 
the  true,  the  loving,  the  candid  spirit  any- 
where shown  helps  everywhere.  It  is  amaz- 
ing how  surely  and  immediately  this  unity 
of  the  spirit  makes  itself  felt. 

This  conviction  of  the  necessary  unity  of 
the  inner  life  carries  with  it  at  once,  it 
will  be  seen,  the  demand  for  reality  every- 
where, —  for  utter  integrity,  even  in  the  in- 
most man.  Just  because  the  life  is  one, 
and  cannot  possibly  be  divided  off  into 
mutually  exclusive  compartments,  the  spirit 
must  be  sound  at  every  point,  with  no 
slightest  trace  of  falseness.  Jesus  must, 
therefore,  say,  ''If  thy  right  hand  cause 
thee  to  stumble,  cut  it  off."  "Salt  is  good  ; 
but  if  the  salt  have  lost  its  saltness,  where- 
with will  ye  season  it  ?  Have  salt  in 
yourselves." 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  45 

But  if  there  is  to  be  reality  everywhere, 
with  no  taint  of  sham  at  any  point,  the 
truth  that  I  declare  must  be  really  my  own 
truth.  I  must  have  chosen  it  and  yielded 
to  it.  The  principle  necessarily  involves, 
thus,  mental  and  spiritual  independence  on 
the  part  of  the  individual  —  not  in  the  sense 
of  conceited  denial  of  the  indispensable  need 
of  the  mental  and  spiritual  fellowship  with 
others,  but  in  the  sense  that  convictions 
and  decisions  and  ideals  and  hopes  that  are 
effectively  to  count  in  my  life,  must  be 
genuinely  my  own  —  in  some  true  sense 
my  own  achievement.  One  must  see  for 
himself,  and  choose  for  himself.  Truth 
that  is  vital  he  must  himself  have  earned. 

Jesus  is  constantly  seeking,  therefore,  to 
bring  men  to  insights,  convictions,  and 
decisions  of  their  own ;  to  real  experience 
out  of  which  they  can  themselves  authori- 
tatively speak.  He  would  not  have  them 
echo  unthinkingly  even  his  own  convictions. 
The  spiritual  life,  in  the  nature  of  the  case, 
must  be  purely  inward.  And  therefore  he 
challenges  them,  ''And  why,  even  of  your- 
selves, judge  ye  not  what  is  right?"  ''He 
that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear." 


46  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

His  message,  consequently,  must  be 
always  one  not  of  external  authority,  but  of 
the  authority  of  that  inner  conviction  that 
comes  from  direct  appeal  to  the  reason  and 
conscience  of  men.  This,  I  suppose,  is  the 
reason  why  his  teaching  is  so  largely  simply 
a  series  of  insights  with  inevitable  appeal. 
How  many  of  his  sayings  are  of  this  sort : 
''Is  it  lawful  on  the  Sabbath  day  to  do 
good  or  to  do  harm  ?  to  save  life  or  to 
kill?"  ''Is  the  lamp  brought  to  be  put 
under  a  bushel  or  under  a  bed,  and  not  to 
be  put  on  the  stand  ? "  "With  what  meas- 
ure ye  mete  it  shall  be  measured  unto  you." 
"  If  the  blind  guide  the  blind,  both  shall  fall 
into  a  pit." 

These,  then,  are  insistent  notes  in  the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  and  necessarily  involved 
in  one  another :  the  essential  unity  of  the 
spiritual  life,  utter  inner  integrity,  mental 
and  spiritual  independence  on  the  part  of 
the  individual,  the  necessary  inwardness  of 
all  spirituality,  the  direct  appeal  to  reason 
and  conscience. 

But  we  are  never  to  forget  that  for  Jesus 
these  demands  are  no  mere  demands  as  to 
the  form  of  life,  but  as  to  its  essential  con- 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  47 

tent.  His  application  of  the  principle  of 
the  unity  of  life  is  that  danger  impends  if 
the  virus  of  the  faithless  and  selfish  life 
enters  at  any  point.  The  inner  integrity 
which  he  demands  is  the  integrity  of  a 
love  genuine  through  and  through,  with  no 
least  germ  of  treachery.  The  mental  and 
spiritual  independence  which  he  seeks  from 
his  disciples  is  that  they  should  come  for 
themselves  into  his  great  unshaken  con- 
victions of  the  infinite  love  of  the  Father, 
and  the  possibility  of  the  life  of  a  like  self- 
forgetful  love  for  every  man.  Such  a  life 
must  have  its  deep  inner  root,  though  it 
will  have  manifold  outward  expressions. 
And  Jesus  believes  so  fully  in  the  omnip- 
otence of  the  love  of  the  Father,  that  he 
knows  that  his  message  of  that  love  must 
find  echo  in  the  heart  of  every  son  of  man. 
Now  these  notes  of  reality  in  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  themselves  suggest  the  way  that 
one  must  take  into  reality  in  the  religious 
life.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  as  if  he  said  : 
Settle  it  with  yourselves  that  the  one  thing 
that  you  want  is  truth,  to  know  the  will  of 
God.  And  this  single  high  determination 
to  know  and  to  do  the  will  of  God  is  the 


48  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

greatest  possible  help  in  finding  the  truth, 
in  finding  that  will  of  God.  The  man  who 
is  saying  after  Jesus,  ''I  am  come,  not  to  do 
mine  own  will,  but  the  will  of  him  that 
sent  me,"  and  who  holds  persistently  to 
that  purpose,  cannot  wish  to  deceive  him- 
self, to  manipulate  the  evidence,  to  take 
the  prejudiced  view.  As  his  one  desire 
is  to  find  the  truth,  he  will  welcome  every 
ray  of  light  from  whatever  source,  and  being 
utterly  true  himself,  is  on  the  certain  way 
to  truth  and  reality  in  his  religious  life. 

For  the  earnest  man  cannot  fail  to  see 
also  that  Jesus  is  here  virtually  saying  to 
his  disciples.  If  you  would  get  that  real 
sharing  in  the  life  of  God  in  which  anything 
that  can  be  called  religion  must  consist, 
do  not  begin  to  juggle  with  your  reason 
and  conscience.  Do  not  twist  the  evidence. 
That  is  to  smother  the  light,  to  corrupt 
the  eye.  Do  not  allow  the  beginning  of 
prejudice.  Do  not  be  a  sophist  with  your 
own  soul,  blinding  your  own  eyes  with 
smooth  persuasions  that  at  bottom  you 
know  are  false.  Do  not  hunt  for  excuses 
for  doing  what  you  know  you  ought  not 
to  do.     As  you  value  your  soul's  life  and 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  49 

all  that  is  worth  while  in  life,  keep  the  ab- 
solutely open  mind,  the  single  eye ;  be 
utterly  true  to  your  own  best  vision.  For 
no  man  can  set  any  limit  to  that  to  which  he 
may  come,  if  he  begins  by  juggling  with  his 
reason  and  conscience. 

Jesus'  whole  uncompromising  war  upon 
the  Pharisaic  spirit  shows  how  constant  in 
him  is  the  passion  for  reality.  He  perfectly 
exemplifies,  in  the  realm  of  the  moral  and 
spiritual,  that  of  which  we  think  to-day  as 
the  very  essence  of  the  scientific  spirit  at 
its  best.  For  he  is  here  insisting  with  his 
disciples,  in  the  third  place,  that  it  must 
be  the  habitual  purpose  of  their  life,  as  we 
have  said  of  the  scientific  spirit,  to  see 
straight,  to  report  exactly,  to  react  with 
absolute  honesty  upon  the  situation  in 
which  they  are  placed.  Less  than  this  at 
any  point  means  that  one  will  be  both 
misled  himself,  and  will  mislead  others. 
The  utterly  honest  reaction  is  the  one 
necessity  for  one's  own  growth,  and  it  is 
at  the  same  time  the  one  great  service  that 
a  man  can  render  to  his  fellow  men.  And 
few  men  need  so  much  this  passion  for 
reality,     this    habitual     honesty,     as     the 


50  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

teachers  of  youth.  They  are  blind  guides 
guiding  the  bhnd,  unless,  with  Jesus,  the 
very  habit  of  their  souls  is  thus  to  see 
straight,  to  report  exactly,  to  react  with 
absolute  honesty. 

And  once  more,  the  man  who  is  in  dead 
earnest  to  come  into  reality  in  religion,  will 
find  help  in  making  sure  that  he  sees  things 
in  proportion.  One  of  the  chief  ends  of 
education  is  the  production  of  the  thought- 
ful man ;  and  the  thoughtful  man  is  the 
man  who  sees  things  in  true  proportion  — 
who  sees  life  steadily  and  sees  it  whole. 
It  was  the  distorted  vision  of  the  Pharisees 
that  accounted  for  so  many  of  their  char- 
acteristics. This  it  was  that  made  it 
possible  for  them  to  substitute  the  negative 
for  the  positive,  neutrality  and  indifference 
for  commitment  and  enthusiastic  devotion, 
the  empty  for  the  filled,  the  sign  for  the 
reality,  the  external  marvel  for  the  inner 
appeal,  the  outer  observance  for  the  inner 
spirit,  the  petty  for  the  great,  rules  for 
principles.  Now,  however  necessary  any 
or  all  of  the  things  for  which  the  Pharisees 
contended  might  be,  it  must  still  be  plain 
to  the  man  who  sees  things  in  proportion 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  51 

that  they  are  all  but  of  the  smallest  con- 
cern, compared  with  the  greatness  of  the 
interests  that  they  replaced.  Against  this 
distorted  vision  Jesus  must  protest,  if  he 
is  to  be  true  either  to  his  own  soul,  or  to  the 
God  whom  he  revealed,  or  to  the  men  whom 
he  loved. 

Jesus  cries  out  in  all  this  for  some  real 
seed  of  life,  no  mere  show  of  it,  or  form  of  it, 
or  rule  to  guard  it,  but  for  life  itself,  abound- 
ing life  —  not  respectable  deadness.  And 
he  felt  sure  that  he  who  would  have  this 
seed  of  life,  real  participation  in  his  own 
spirit,  genuine  sharing  in  God's  life  of  love, 
must  be  -vigilantly  on  his  guard  against 
these  manifestations  of  the  blinded  soul. 

Why,  now,  is  Christ  so  insistent  upon 
the  integrity  of  the  inner  spirit  ?  In  the 
first  place,  just  because  the  whole  progress 
of  the  kingdom  of  righteousness  depends 
upon  the  absolute  soundness  of  the  indi- 
vidual life.  Jesus  must  be  insistent  here. 
Dead  seed  will  give  no  harvest. 

Moreover,  he  felt  the  deadening  effect 
of  many  tendencies  of  his  own  time,  and 
he  must  save  his  disciples  from  that  trend 
toward  externalism,  toward  conventionality, 


52  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

and  toward  mere  authority,  which  so  char- 
acterized his  age.  And  Hke  tendencies 
continue  to  work  in  every  generation. 
The  man  who  would  be  real,  who  would  be 
awake,  who  would  be  himself,  must  resist 
daily  the  pressure  of  authority,  of  the  ex- 
ternal, of  the  conventional.  We  need  the 
sharp,  unsparing  criticisms  of  the  most 
ruthless  prickers  of  bubbles,  like  Nietsche 
and  Ibsen  and  Shaw ;  not,  once  more,  that 
we  may  follow  them  blindly,  but  that  we 
may  be  sure  that  we  have  not  substituted 
the  mere  conventions  of  custom  for  genuine 
moral  insights  and  enthusiasms.  Inner  in- 
tegrity and  individual,  independent  in- 
sight and  conviction,  —  upon  these  de- 
pends the  moral  health  of  the  world. 
Everything  is  here  at  stake,  and  the  en- 
vironment threatens. 

But  the  peril  of  failure  at  this  point  has 
a  still  further  reason.  The  paradoxical 
demands  of  the  moral  life  themselves  make 
failure  easy. 

Conscience  demands  both  mental  and 
spiritual  fellowship,  and  mental  and  spirit- 
ual independence.  Just  because  we  need 
others  so  much  and  so  decisively,  it  is  easy 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  53 

to  surrender  all  independence  and  initiative 
of  our  own,  easy  to  forget  that  truth  is 
not  truth  until  it  has  been  earned.  Just 
because  we  must  modestly  admit  that  we 
constantly  require  the  witness  of  others  who 
have  preceded  us  in  the  experience  of  values, 
it  is  easy  to  allow  ourselves  simply  to  repeat 
their  confessions  after  them,  instead  of 
compelling  ourselves  to  see  for  ourselves 
as  they  saw  for  themselves.  In  another's 
words,  ''Religious  tradition  is  indispensable 
for  us.  But  it  helps  us  only  if  it  leads  us 
on  to  listen  to  what  God  says  to  ourselves.  " 
"We  all  need  moral  help  from  others,  but 
not  the  substitution  of  a  ready-made  list 
of  duties  for  the  results  of  our  own  think- 
ing." 

So,  too,  just  because  the  inner  spirit 
must  have  its  external  embodiment,  some 
form  of  outward  expression,  if  it  is  actually 
to  work  in  the  world  at  all ;  just  because 
the  external  is,  in  this,  indispensable,  it  is 
all  too  easy  to  insist  upon  the  external,  and 
be  careless  whether  it  is  —  what  it  must 
be  if  it  is  to  be  of  any  value  —  the  inevitable 
manifestation  of  an  inner  life.  We  may  make 
glass  flowers  so  cunningly  devised  that  we 


54  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

can  hardly  tell  them  from  the  real  blossom, 
but  there  is  no  life  in  them,  no  least  evi- 
dence of  an  unfolding  life. 

So,  too,  just  because  one  cannot  bring 
in  light  without  dispelling  darkness,  just 
because  one  cannot  bring  into  the  soul  great 
causes  and  great  enthusiasms  without 
thereby  casting  out  the  evil,  and  even  the 
petty;  just  because  all  positive  enthusiasms 
involve  in  themselves  certain  negations,  it 
is  easy  to  mistake  the  negations  and  the 
subsidiary  means  for  ends  in  themselves, 
and  make  negation  the  goal  of  life,  and  be 
content  with  the  empty  soul.  The  petty 
then  replaces  the  great;  "the  hedge"  of 
the  law,  the  great  ends  of  justice  and  mercy 
and  faith.  Emptiness  is  substituted  for 
the  engrossing  enterprises  of  the  kingdom 
of  righteousness. 

Thus,  in  varying  forms,  the  paradoxical 
claims  of  the  moral  life  themselves  make  it 
easy  to  fail  at  the  vital  point.  For  in  any 
one  of  these  ways  there  may  insidiously 
come  in  the  creeping  paralysis  of  inner 
futility  and  falseness.  It  is  because  of  this 
constant  peril  of  failure  at  the  center  of 
life  that  Jesus  is  here  so  insistent.     I  sup- 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  55 

pose  that  Jesus'  insistence  means  that,  if 
he  were  to  address  the  graduates  of  our 
colleges  to-day,  the  questions  that  would 
seem  to  him  vital  are  such  as  these :  Have 
you  any  vision  of  your  own  ?  Have  you 
moral  and  spiritual  insights  that  mean 
anything  to  you  ?  Have  you  God-given 
convictions  wrought  into  the  very  fiber 
of  your  own  life  ?  Have  you  any  message 
that  is  yours,  and  that  you  feel  that  you 
must  utter  ?  Have  you  any  indignations 
and  enthusiasms  that  shake  you  to  the 
center  of  your  being  ?  If  your  college 
education  has  left  you  without  these ;  or, 
worse  still,  if  it  has  robbed  you  of  them  and 
left  you  sophisticated  and  blase,  having 
mistaken  moral  and  religious  indifference 
for  tolerance,  and  lack  of  conviction  for 
breadth,  then  may  God  forgive  you  and 
the  college,  for  no  other  can. 

But  side  by  side  with  this  indispensable 
inner  integrity,  the  method  of  life  requires 
as  equally  fundamental,  fellowship.  Hon- 
esty is  not  inconsistent  with  modesty.  It 
rather  requires  the  open  mind.  For  while 
one  insists  on  that  complete  honesty  that 
does  not  allow  him  to  catch  up,  without 


S6  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

interpreting  experience,  the  opinions  of 
another,  there  should  obviously  be  at  the 
same  time  the  modest  perception  that  one 
has  probably  not  exhausted  in  his  own  ex- 
perience the  meaning  of  any  of  the  great 
values.  And  he  may  well  expect,  therefore, 
if  he  goes  honestly  forward,  to  share  in- 
creasingly in  the  larger  insights  of  those 
who  have  lived  most  in  these  spheres  of 
value.  Just  as  in  the  realm  of  the  aesthetic 
and  of  the  scientific  and  of  the  philosophical 
we  cherish  just  such  expectations,  so  in  the 
realm  of  the  moral  and  religious  we  have  a 
right  to  hope  for  much  more  in  the  line  of 
the  experience  of  those  who  have  given  here 
most  time  and  thought.  We  need  their 
testimony,  their  leading ;  we  may  well 
clearly  recognize  it,  and  keep  toward  them 
the  open  mind.  We  wish  to  share  in  the 
deeper  convictions  of  the  great  souls  every- 
where, but  we  wish  really  to  share  and  not 
to  have  fellowship  in  name  only. 

The  fact  is  that  the  rule  in  all  the  realms 
of  life  is  that  we  are  commonly  introduced 
through  the  testimony  of  some  other  who 
has  preceded  us  in  appreciation  of  the  value 
we  are  seeking.     We  are  born  into  a  world 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  57 

in  which  many  are  already  living  in  these 
values.  Our  insights  here  cannot,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  all  be  fresh  discoveries  of 
our  own.  The  constant  and  immensely 
effective  factor  of  imitation  in  hiiman  re- 
lationships makes  it  certain  that  we  cannot, 
if  we  would,  avoid  this  introduction  into 
the  great  values.  And  he  would  doom  him- 
self to  a  poverty-stricken  life  indeed,  who 
should  attempt  the  folly  of  discovering  all 
values  for  himself.  Is  it  not  the  very  busi- 
ness of  the  literary  or  art  critic,  of  the 
teacher,  of  the  scientific  worker,  of  the 
friend,  and  of  the  religious  leader  to  share 
with  us  their  own  best  ?  Just  because 
*'art  is  long  and  time  is  fleeting,"  we  may 
not  hope  that  all  the  insights  into  which 
we  come  are  to  be  discoveries  of  our  own. 
And  it  is  commonly  through  this  introduc- 
tion of  some  other  that  all  the  values  have 
come  to  us.  The  books,  the  pictures,  the 
interests,  the  friends,  the  moral  and  spirit- 
ual ideals  which  we  have  in  our  inner  pos- 
session, have  largely  come  to  us  at  the 
beginning  through  the  testimony  of  others. 
That  this  should  be  the  rule  in  religion  also 
is   therefore   quite   to   be   expected.     It   is 


58  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

natural,  then,  that  Professor  Bosworth 
should  be  able  to  say  that  the  program  of 
Christianity  is  the  conquest  of  the  world 
by  a  campaign  of  testimony  through  em- 
powered witnesses.  And  it  is  no  accident 
that  in  the  Gospel  of  John,  side  by  side  with 
the  great  words  Light,  and  Life,  and  Love, 
there  is  another  —  Witness. 

The  fellowship  that  life  requires  is  always 
a  double  fellowship.  For  there  are  just 
two  services  of  supreme  value  that  one 
man  can  render  another :  he  can  lay  upon 
that  other  the  impress  of  a  high  and  noble 
character  by  being  the  kind  of  man  he 
ought  to  be ;  and  he  can  share  with  the 
other  his  own  best  vision  —  that  by  which 
he  himself  most  lives.  Beyond  this  there 
is  nothing  of  supreme  worth  that  one  can 
bring  into  another's  life.  And  this  method 
of  the  contagion  of  the  good  life,  in  the 
sharing  of  its  spirit  and  of  its  vision,  is 
ever3rwhere  the  method  of  life. 

Jesus  has  used  various  illustrations  to 
make  clear  his  sense  of  the  only  way  in 
which  society  can  be  brought  to  its  true 
goal.  Only  men  can  save  men.  The  good 
life  is  the  salt  that  must  preserve  the  earth 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  59 

sound.  It  is  the  light  that  must  enHghten 
the  world's  darkness.  It  is  the  leaven  that 
must  permeate  every  element  of  the  lump 
of  society.  It  is  the  seed  of  life  that  must 
grow  and  reproduce  itself.  The  kingdom 
of  love  can  be  established  only  through  the 
loving  life.  It  cannot  be  legislated  into 
existence.  It  cannot  be  created  out  of 
hand.  Life  comes  only  from  life.  This 
is  the  theory  and  method  of  Jesus,  and  it 
does  seem,  at  first  sight,  hopelessly  simple 
and  ridiculously  inadequate. 

And  yet  the  method  of  the  contagion  of 
the  good  life  is  a  hopeful  method.  It  is 
with  great  hope  in  his  heart  that  Jesus 
sets  himself,  thus,  through  the  divine  touch 
of  his  own  life,  to  create  out  of  the  little 
circle  about  him  this  life-giving  seed  and 
nucleus  of  the  world's  civilization.  For 
he  has  matchless  faith  in  the  contagion  of 
the  good,  in  its  capacity  for  growth.  If 
one  would  have  a  figure  of  what  may  be 
expected  from  the  single  good  life  hidden 
in  society's  mass,  let  him  look,  he  says,  at 
the  million-fold  growth  of  a  single  grain  of 
mustard  seed ;  such  is  the  promise  of  the 
good  seed  of  the  Kingdom,  divinely  quick- 


6o  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

ened.     The  hidden  forces  of  the  universe 

—  the  power  of  Almighty  God  —  are  in 
the  seed.  The  good  Hfe  is  the  Hfe  that 
seeks  the  ends  of  God,  and  he  who  seeks 
the  ends  of  God  may  count  upon  the  power 
of  God.  Surely  the  Kingdom  of  God  is 
like  a  grain  of  mustard  seed ;  we  may 
believe  and  hope  endlessly.  Salt  will  pre- 
serve, light  will  enlighten,  leaven  will  work, 
life  will  grow.  The  good  life  is  inevitably 
and  mightily  contagious.  We  may  count 
upon  it  for  every  germ  of  good  in  ourselves, 
in  those  we  love,  in  the  world.  We  are  to 
keep  high  our  hope. 

Nevertheless,  men  scout  the  forces  that 
Jesus  counted  alone  sufficient,  as  hope- 
lessly feeble.     The  power  of  a  loving  life 

—  how  little,  they  have  said,  can  it  do  ! 
And  through  the  generations,  they  have 
brought,  for  example,  the  whole  enginery 
of  the  state  to  bear,  with  force  and  violence 
and  pimishment,  upon  the  criminal,  only  to 
drive  him  further  into  crime.  While  claim- 
ing the  name  of  Christ,  they  have  scorn- 
fully abjured  the  methods  of  Christ  as 
weakly  sentimental  and  ineffective.  It  is 
against  this  infidelity  of  professedly  Chris- 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  6i 

tian  states,  against  the  unspeakable  folly 
of  refusing  to  use  the  only  omnipotent 
forces,  that  Tolstoy  has  justly  cried  out. 
And  it  is  the  greatest  glory  of  our  own  time, 
that  in  it  are  found  men,  who  are  slowly 
regaining  the  faith  of  Jesus  in  the  omnip- 
otence of  the  humble,  believing,  loving  life. 
Judge  Lindsey's  marvelous  Juvenile  Court 
record  is  a  plain  translation  into  a  piece 
of  modern  life,  of  Christ's  own  method  of  the 
contagion  of  the  loving  life.  And  the 
increasing  adoption  of  the  "big  brother" 
method  in  Juvenile  Courts  is  only  an  ex- 
hibition of  the  same  spirit.  It  is  no  cheap 
and  easy  method.  But  open-minded  himiil- 
ity  and  trust  and  patient  self-giving  love  are 
proving  the  only  really  effective  forces  for  the 
conquest  of  evil.  The  method  of  the  con- 
tagion of  the  loving  life  is  a  hopeful  method. 
The  simplicity  of  Christ's  method  im- 
plies, further,  that  ultimately  it  is  the  in- 
evitable method ;  that  the  only  thing, 
finally,  that  any  man  has  to  give  is  him- 
self—  the  contagion  of  his  own  spirit. 
If  that  self  is  significant  and  worthy,  so  is 
his  service.  If  the  self  is  worthless,  so  is 
all  attempted  service.     No  machinery,  no 


62  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

device,  no  externals  of  any  kind,  no  magic, 
no  miracle,  can  get  worthful  service  out  of  a 
worthless  self.  Neither  education  nor  re- 
ligion can  furnish  a  way  by  which  one  may 
trick  the  laws  of  life.  Acute  lawyers  may 
find  loop-holes  in  human  legislation,  but 
there  is  no  way  of  tricking  the  laws  of 
God.  There  is  no  possible  manipulation 
by  which  life  can  be  gotten  from  death, 
truth  from  falsity,  genuineness  from  sham. 

Both  the  critics  and  the  defenders  of 
educational  methods,  therefore,  are  quite 
certain  to  exaggerate.  There  is,  no  doubt, 
a  choice  in  methods.  But  the  one  final 
method  back  of  all  subsidiary  methods  is  the 
contact  of  life  with  life.  Ultimately  the 
one  indispensable  thing  is  a  man  of  char- 
acter and  judgment,  and  the  honest  re- 
sponse of  honest  souls  to  such  a  soul. 
Granted  that,  the  most  faulty  methods 
cannot  wholly  fail.  Lacking  that,  the  most 
scientific  pedagogy  will  not  suffice.  The 
method  of  the  contagion  of  the  good  life 
is  the  inevitable  method.  Finally  we  are 
shut  up  to  that. 

This  method  of  Jesus,  too,  is  a  positive 
method.     Jesus  cares  for  no  goodness  that 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  63 

is  merely  negative.  The  only  goodness  he 
knows  is  the  goodness  of  a  positive,  minister- 
ing, self-forgetting,  self-giving  love.  It  is 
the  very  business  of  salt  to  season,  of  light 
to  enlighten,  of  yeast  to  leaven,  of  the  seed 
to  die  to  itself  and  live  again  in  far  larger 
life.  The  stupidity  of  shutting  any  one  of 
these  up  to  itself,  of  depriving  them  of  their 
very  reason  for  being,  is,  in  Jesus'  thought, 
exactly  the  stupidity  of  the  righteousness 
that  exhausts  itself  in  separation  of  itself 
from  evil,  in  shutting  out  the  possibility  of 
contamination.  As  surely  as  the  salt  is  to 
season  the  savorless,  and  as  light  is  to  en- 
lighten darkness,  so  is  goodness  to  penetrate 
the  world  with  its  own  spirit  and  throw  it- 
self with  abandon  into  the  life  of  the  world 
for  the  world's  saving.  The  method  of 
love  is  perforce  the  method  of  fellowship. 
It  may  not  withdraw  itself  from  association 
with  men  without  losing  its  own  identity. 
The  disciple  of  Christ,  therefore,  knows 
that  it  is  self-contradiction  to  talk  of  saving 
oneself  in  forgetfulness  of  others.  The 
righteousness  of  the  Kingdom  is  the  right- 
eousness of  high  and  positive  and  loving 
conquest,    the   carrying   through   of   great 


64  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

enterprises  of  good  for  men.  Goodness,  in 
Christ's  thought,  is  not  only  not  uninterest- 
ing, it  is  the  one  most  interesting  of  all 
things.  The  disciple  of  the  righteous  life, 
therefore,  feels  the  express  obligation  and  the 
high  privilege  of  mental  and  spiritual  fellow- 
ship, of  constantly  multiplying  and  deepen- 
ing relations  with  men. 

The  method  of  the  contagion  of  the  good 
life  is  a  positive,  aggressive  method.  It  is 
hopeful,  inevitable,  positive. 

But  all  the  values  of  literature,  and  music, 
and  art,  of  science  and  philosophy,  of 
friendship,  and  of  moral  and  religious  ideals, 
are  after  all  but  a  partial  revelation  of  the 
riches  of  some  personality,  and  our  one  great 
road,  therefore,  into  life  in  all  realms 
is  this  road  of  personal  association  with  the 
richest,  the  largest,  the  best  lives.  The 
greater  and  the  more  significant  the  values 
we  are  seeking,  the  more  do  we  need  to  share 
the  visions  of  many  concerning  them,  and 
these,  the  best.  It  must  be  peculiarly 
true  for  the  religious  man,  with  his  search 
for  fellowship  with  the  Infinite,  that  he 
needs  imperatively  the  supplementary 
visions   of   all   the   greatest   souls. 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  65 

The  one  all-inclusive  counsel,  therefore, 
as  I  have  elsewhere  said,  for  attainment  in 
all  of  the  spheres  of  value  is  this :  Stay 
persistently  in  the  presence  of  the  best  in 
the  sphere  in  which  you  seek  achievement, 
with  honest  response ;  the  rest  will  largely 
take  care  of  itself.  Hear  persistently  the 
best  in  music,  and  only  the  best ;  one  need 
not  be  anxious  under  those  circumstances 
concerning  his  musical  taste  ;  it  will  steadily 
refine,  and  his  judgment  become  more  and 
more  accurate.  See  persistently  the  best 
and  only  the  best  in  art ;  once  again,  the 
reaction  on  one's  own  artistic  judgment  is 
practically  certain.  Read  persistently  the 
best  in  literature ;  the  poor  stuff  will  fall 
off  of  itself,  and  one  will  come  instinctively 
to  prefer  that  which  deserves  his  approval. 
Share  persistently  in  the  insights  and 
methods  of  the  ablest  workers  in  science, 
and  history  and  philosophy ;  no  one  can 
then  cheat  you  of  real  participation  of  your 
own  in  the  historical,  the  scientific,  or  the 
philosophical  spirit.  Stay  persistently  in 
the  presence  of  the  best  in  character,  in 
moral  and  religious  ideal ;  the  richest  re- 
sults that  life  has  to  offer  are  then  insured 


66  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

to  you.  This  is  precisely  the  principle 
which  Paul  enjoins  when  he  writes  :  ''What- 
soever things  are  true,  whatsoever  things 
are  honorable,  whatsoever  things  are  just, 
whatsoever  things  are  pure,  whatsoever 
things  are  lovely,  whatsoever  things  are  of 
good  report ;  if  there  be  any  virtue,  and  if 
there  be  any  praise,  think  on  these  things." 
It  is  well  that  we  should  make  it  per- 
petually clear  to  ourselves  that,  when,  in 
any  of  the  realms  of  value,  we  give  the 
best,  opportunity  with  us,  we  are  really 
sharing  in  the  personal  revelation  of  some 
personal  life.  The  supreme  law  of  life  is 
this  law  of  personal  association,  in  which  we 
give  time  and  thought  and  attention  to  the 
wealth  of  those  personalities  that  have  most 
to  give.  There  is  no  cheaper  road  to  the 
best  in  any  realm.  Life  knows  no  less 
costly  method  than  this  persistent  associa- 
tion with  those  to  whom  we  can  look  in 
admiration  and  love,  and  who  are  ready  to 
share  unstintedly  with  us  the  best  that 
they  have  themselves  achieved.  And  we 
can  count  with  certainty  on  the  effects  of 
this  law  of  personal  association.  No  one, 
perhaps,  has  put  more  impressively  than 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  67 

George  Eliot  this  need  of  the  incarnate 
ideal,  in  a  passage  that  I  have  often  quoted  : 
' '  Ideas  are  often  poor  ghosts ;  our  sun- 
filled  eyes  cannot  discern  them  —  they  pass 
athwart  us  in  their  vapor,  and  cannot  make 
themselves  felt.  But  sometimes  they  are 
made  flesh  ;  they  breathe  upon  us  with  warm 
breath,  they  touch  us  with  soft  responsive 
hands,  they  look  at  us  with  sad  sincere 
eyes,  and  speak  to  us  in  appealing  tones  ; 
they  are  clothed  in  a  living  human  soul, 
with  all  its  conflicts,  its  faith,  and  its  love. 
Then  their  presence  is  a  power,  then  they 
shake  us  like  a  passion,  and  we  are  drawn 
after  them,  with  gentle  compulsion,  as  flame 
is  drawn  to  flame." 

This  law  of  association  means,  further, 
that  just  as  we  require  from  those  whose 
testimony  concerning  any  of  the  great  values 
is  to  count  with  us,  that  they  shall  them- 
selves have  undoubted  conviction,  character 
and  judgment  that  we  can  trust,  manifest 
disinterestedness,  and  the  power  to  make 
their  witness  real  and  rational  and  vital ; 
so  for  us  also,  who  in  our  turn  are  to  help 
others  into  the  great  values  of  life,  there 
is  need  of  these  same  qualities  of  effective 


68  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

testimony.  And  there  is  no  way  to  these 
very  quahties  so  sure  as  this  same  way  of 
persistent  association  with  those  who  have 
achieved  most  in  these  realms  of  value. 

Moreover,  if  in  all  these  realms  we  are 
dealing  not  with  vain  imaginations,  but 
with  reality,  we  can  be  sure  that  the  great 
law  of  personal  association  means  also, 
that  we  have  no  need  in  any  realm  to  pre- 
tend, or  to  put  pressure  upon  our  minds 
to  reach  a  certain  attitude  or  position. 
We  have  one  obligation  only,  and  that  is 
simply  to  let  the  great  facts  and  values 
make  their  own  legitimate  impression.  The 
great  values  do  not  need  that  we  should 
force  our  minds  to  faith  in  them  ;  they  need 
only  opportunity  and  honest  response. 
And  if  the  best  does  not  attract  us,  we 
have  not  so  much  judged  it,  as  been  judged 
by  it. 

It  is  true  that  different  kinds  of  values 
make  a  different  kind  of  appeal  to  the 
human  personality.  What  an  ''honest  re- 
sponse" means,  therefore,  varies  somewhat 
with  the  realm  of  value  concerned.  But 
an  honest  response  to  any  value  requires 
some    element    of    activity    on    our    part, 


THE  METHOD  OF  LIFE  69 

either  the  activity  of  intellectual  appre- 
hension, or  of  warm  aesthetic  appreciation, 
or  of  earnest  ethical  commitment  of  will. 
And  where  character  and  moral  or  religious 
ideal  are  involved,  it  is  plain  that  the  ap- 
peal is  made  to  the  whole  man  to  a  degree 
that  does  not  hold  of  the  lesser  values. 
Here,  then,  it  is  not  enough  that  we  should 
respond  simply  with  intellectual  apprehen- 
sion or  with  aesthetic  admiration ;  here  we 
must  make  answer  with  commitment  of 
will  and  the  loyal  response  of  our  whole 
being.  The  ethical  and  religious  challenge 
us  to  decision  that  cannot  be  gainsaid: 
Will  you  or  won't  you  have  it  so  ? 

But  just  because  all  the  great  values  of 
life  go  back  to  the  revelation  of  the  riches 
of  some  great  personality,  our  plain  life- 
task,  as  Kaftan  used  to  say  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Berlin,  is  to  enter  with  conviction 
and  appreciation  into  the  understanding 
of  the  great  personalities  of  history.  Herr- 
mann has  already  been  quoted  as  saying : 
*'  We  ought  at  every  moment  to  make  the 
rule  of  our  conduct  this :  Thou  shouldst 
throw  thy  whole  being  into  the  effort  to 
attain  the  profoundest  and  most  far-reach- 


70  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

ing  fellowship  with  other  men  that  is  pos- 
sible." And  this,  both  for  giving  and  for 
receiving.  For  the  strengthening  of  our 
own  life,  and  so  for  greater  power  to  give, 
we  peculiarly  need  the  fellowship  of  the 
best  lives.  Our  great  life-task,  therefore, 
may  be  truly  said  to  be,  to  come  into  some 
rewarding  fellowship  with  the  great  souls 
of  htmian  history;  with  the  great  artists, 
and  discoverers,  and  seers,  and  heroes,  and 
saints,  culminating  in  the  matchless  life  of 
Jesus,  until  we  reflect,  however  imperfectly, 
something  of  their  character  and  of  their 
vision  of  beauty,  and  truth,  and  God. 
"The  prophet,"  Professor  James  says,  ''has 
drunk  more  deeply  than  any  one  of  the  cup 
of  bitterness,  but  his  countenance  is  so  un- 
shaken and  he  speaks  such  mighty  words  of 
cheer,  that  his  will  becomes  our  will,  and 
our  life  is  kindled  at  his  own." 

The  method  of  life  is  the  method  of 
mental  and  spiritual  fellowship,  as  well  as 
the  method  of  mental  and  spiritual  in- 
dependence, —  the  contagion  of  the  good 
life.  Men  are  to  be  salt,  and  the  salt  must 
not  have  lost  its  saltness. 


Ill 

THE   REALITIES   OF   LIFE 
Facing  the  Facts  of  Life 

We  have  seen  that  the  method  of  Hfe 
includes,  as  indispensable,  utter  honesty, 
open-minded  facing  of  the  facts,  and  honest 
reaction  upon  them.  And  the  really  honest 
man  must  be  willing  to  face  all  the  facts, 
—  not  only  the  facts  that  lie  upon  the  sur- 
face, but'  the  facts  of  the  whole  man ;  the 
less  obvious  but  deeper  realities ;  the  facts 
that  underlie  man's  whole  ideal  struggle. 
What  would  that  mean  to  the  thoughtful 
man  ? 

I  suppose  there  are  few  things  that  the 
real  man  or  woman  hates  more  than  simply 
to  mark  time  —  to  go  through  the  motions 
of  things  without  getting  anywhere.  And 
surely,  if  there  is  any  place  where,  above 
all,  the  real  man  does  not  wish  to  mark  time, 
it  must  be  in  the  region  of  his  moral  and 
spiritual  life.     It  seems,   therefore,   pecul- 

71 


72  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

iarly  worth  while,  at  times,  to  call  up  into 
clear  consciousness  those  silent  assimip- 
tions  that  underlie  all  earnest  moral  and 
religious  endeavor.  Beneath  all  such  in- 
dividual effort,  beneath  all  the  activities 
and  services  of  the  Church,  beneath  all  the 
labor  of  Christian  education,  beneath  all 
the  ideal  enterprises  of  the  race,  there  lies, 
first  of  all,  the  clear  assumption  that  the 
supreme  interests  are  those  of  character ; 
that,  as  Thomas  Arnold  used  to  say  to  the 
boys  at  Rugby,  whence  have  gone  out  so 
many  of  the  leaders  of  English  political  life, 
^'The  only  thing  of  moment  in  life  or  in 
man  is  character"  ;  or,  as  another  has  put 
it,  ''The  great  soul  will  be  strong  to  live, 
as  well  as  to  think."  To  have  failed  here, 
is  fundamental  failure,  whether  for  the  in- 
dividual or  the  civilization.  For,  as  Eucken 
says,  ''every  culture  that  does  not  treat 
the  ethical  task,  in  the  widest  sense,  as  the 
most  important  of  tasks,  and  the  one  that 
decides  all,  sinks  inevitably  to  a  mere  sem- 
blance of  culture,  a  half  culture,  indeed  a 
comedy." 

But    this    assumption,    which    underlies 
all   effort   to   attain   noble   living,    implies 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  73 

another :  that  convictions  and  decisions 
and  ideals  and  hopes  are  needed.  For 
character  does  not  spring  up  out  of  vacancy. 
It  roots  in  certain  great  convictions ;  it 
expresses  itself  in  certain  great  decisions ; 
it  is  guided  by  certain  great  ideals ;  and 
it  is  inspired  by  certain  great  hopes.  And 
the  only  thing  that  justifies  the  agencies 
of  morals  and  religion,  and  all  our  efforts 
and  our  studies  and  our  plans  is  that  out 
of  them,  somehow,  we  expect  that  there 
shall  come  some  producing,  some  deepening, 
some  maintaining  at  least,  of  convictions, 
decisions,  ideals,  and  hopes.  Unless  some- 
thing of  that  is  attained,  we  merely  go 
through  the  motions  of  things ;  we  mark 
time ;  we  do  not  achieve. 

But  this  assumption,  in  turn,  involves 
another,  that  time  and  thought  and  atten- 
tion are  necessary.  For  no  man  can  come 
by  mere  drifting  into  significant  convictions 
and  decisions  and  ideals  and  hopes.  They 
necessarily  imply  that  we  have  stood,  with 
time  and  thought  and  attention,  in  the 
presence  of  the  abiding  truths  —  of  the 
majestic  facts  that  make  for  character  and 
for  reality  in  the  spiritual  life,  and  given 


74  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

them  opportunity  with  us.  Every  thought- 
ful appeal  to  men,  every  service  of  the 
Church  and  every  agency  of  the  Church, 
and  every  ideal  claim  go  back  ultimately 
to  this  assumption,  that  men  need  to  give 
time  and  thought  and  attention,  if  the 
things  of  the  spirit  are  to  have  for  them  the 
grip  of  reaHty.  In  the  long  run,  we  may 
not  forget,  the  world  of  the  spirit  is  likely 
to  be  real  to  us,  in  just  about  the  propor- 
tion in  which  we  allow  it  to  become  real 
by  earnest  honest  attention. 

There  is  still  one  more  of  these  silent 
assumptions  of  all  the  ideal  activities : 
that  these  questions  of  the  moral  and 
spiritual  life,  as  we  have  already  seen,  are 
always  individual  questions.  No  man  may 
act  in  another's  place.  A  decision  is  no 
decision,  if  it  be  not  the  man's  own.  Truth 
that  is  truth  must  be  earned.  Faith,  a  great 
philosopher  urges,  is  a  deed.  One's  father 
may  bequeath  to  one  his  fortune,  but  he 
cannot  bequeath  his  convictions.  One's 
mother  may  give  to  one  some  precious 
heirloom ;  she  cannot  give,  much  as  she 
might  desire  to  do  so,  her  ideals  or  her 
decisions.     Convictions  and  ideals  and  de- 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  75 

cisions  are  essentially  individual,  and  they 
must  be  continually  reaffirmed  even  for 
the  same  individual  from  time  to  time,  and 
still  more  for  every  generation.  One  is 
reminded  of  that  great  picture  of  Raphael's, 
''The  School  at  Athens,"  with  the  little 
group  of  students  gathered  about  a  geo- 
metrical demonstration  on  the  floor.  One 
pupil  is  manifestly  following  the  teacher 
with  full  appreciation,  evidently  getting 
his  own  insight.  Another  pupil,  not  quite 
catching  the  point,  looks  up  with  inquiry 
at  the  one  bending  over  him  to  find  whether 
he  sees.  Now  it  is  no  help  to  the  second 
pupil  th'at  the  first  sees ;  it  would  be  no 
help  to  him  to  find  that  the  third  saw.  He 
must  himself  see,  if  the  truth  of  the  demon- 
stration is  to  be  his  at  all.  In  like  manner, 
in  the  whole  realm  of  the  moral  and  spirit- 
ual life,  if  we  are  to  see  at  all,  we  must 
see  for  ourselves.     ''Faith  is  a  deed." 

But  if  the  supreme  interests  are  those  of 
character;  if,  therefore,  convictions  and 
decisions  and  ideals  and  hopes  are  requisite  ; 
if  to  this  end,  time  and  thought  and  atten- 
tion are  necessary ;  and  if  these  questions 
of  the  spiritual  life  are  inevitably  individual 


76  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

questions  —  that  no  other  can  meet  in 
our  place  —  then,  the  very  determination 
not  to  mark  time  in  the  spiritual  life,  must 
carry  us  infallibly  into  a  steady  honest 
facing  of  the  facts  of  life  —  the  outstanding 
realities  of  the  moral  and  religious  life. 
For  convictions,  decisions,  ideals,  and  hopes 
can  arise  within  us  only  by  honest  reaction 
upon  the  facts. 

This  age  has  been,  in  singular  degree, 
an  age  of  intellectual  revolution.  And  yet 
there  remain,  in  spite  of  this  enormous  in- 
tellectual revolution,  certain  great,  com- 
mon, human  facts  that  are  just  the  same, 
and  that  give  abiding  significance  to  human 
life.  These  do  not  vary  with  the  trappings 
of  civilization.  Human  nature  remains. 
Our  true  life  lies  not  primarily  in  relation 
to  things,  but  in  relation  to  persons.  The 
outstanding  realities,  then,  that  it  most 
concerns  us  all  steadily  and  honestly  to 
face,  are  those  great  common  facts  that 
belong  alike  and  equally  to  all  of  us  simply 
as  human  beings.  They  abide  through  all 
intellectual  changes.  They  are  essentially 
the  same  to-day  as  they  were  centuries  ago, 
and   shall   be   the   same   centuries   hence ; 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  77 

the  same  for  the  West  as  for  the  East ; 
the  same  everywhere. 

The  question,  then,  that  chiefly  concerns 
the  soul  in  earnest  pursuit  of  Hfe  is  this : 
Am  I  wilHng  to  face  the  facts  of  Hfe,  or  am 
I  ignoring  them  —  the  great,  common, 
essential  human  facts  ?  I  cannot  forget 
that  my  own  old  college  president  used  to 
remind  us  that  the  essence  of  unbelief  was 
not  denial  of  the  truth,  but  refusal  to  treat 
the  truth  as  true.  That  is  all.  We  are 
not  measured  by  the  truths  that  we  deny, 
but  by  the  truths  that,  recognizing,  we 
still  are  practically  ignoring.  That  is, 
therefor^,  a  momentous  sentence  that  lies 
so  near  the  beginning  of  Coleridge's  Aids  to 
Reflection:  "Truths,  of  all  others  the  most 
awful  and  interesting,  are  too  often  regarded 
as  so  true,  that  they  lose  all  the  power  of 
truth,  and  lie  bedridden  in  the  dormitory 
of  the  soul,  side  by  side  with  the  most 
despised  and  exploded  errors."  Our  real 
inner  creed  is  not  that  list  of  propositions, 
short  or  long,  that  we  might  be  persuaded 
to  write  out  some  day  in  our  libraries,  but 
that  much  shorter  list  that  we  are  ready, 
steadily,  day  after  day,  to  put  into  our  life. 


78  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

That  is  our  real  inner  creed.  But  as 
Gladstone  long  ago  said:  ''Many  men 
know  their  opinions,  few  their  convictions ; 
but  in  the  long  run  convictions  rule,  opin- 
ions go  to  the  wall."  And  convictions  come 
only  from  honest  reaction  on  the  facts.  It 
is  a  matter  of  supreme  moment,  then,  that 
a  man  should  not  ignore  the  fundamental 
facts  of  his  own  being  and  life. 

Here,  the  man  who  means  to  show  utter 
inner  integrity,  must  be  willing  squarely  to 
face,  not  only  the  facts  that  lie  on  the  sur- 
face of  his  life,  but  those  less  obvious  but 
deep-going  facts  that  underlie  man's  entire 
endeavor  for  the  accomplishment  of  ideal 
aims. 

'  First  of  all,  the  honest  man  cannot  allow 
himself  to  ignore  the  laws  of  life,  involved 
in  his  very  nature.  That  is  a  very  signif- 
icant definition  of  education  which  Huxley 
gives :  ' '  Education  is  the  instruction  of 
the  intellect  in  the  laws  of  nature  —  under 
which  name  I  include  not  merely  things 
and  their  forces,  but  men  and  their  ways ; 
and  the  fashioning  of  the  affections  and  the 
will  into  an  earnest  and  loving  desire  to 
move  in  harmony  with  those  laws."     Now, 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  79 

it  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the  moral  Hfe 
that  a  man  should  thus  come  to  know  and 
obey  the  laws  of  life.  And  the  thoughtful 
facing  of  the  facts  of  life  surely  includes 
just  this  readiness  to  see  and  obey  these 
laws  that  are  involved  in  man's  very  nature. 
Now  religion  must  look  upon  these  laws  of 
fundamental  htmian  nature  as  laws  of  God, 
the  creator  of  that  nature,  and  as,  therefore, 
laws  of  enlarging  life,  to  be  taken  on  not 
reluctantly,  but  with  joyful  eagerness,  as  a 
part  of  the  will  of  the  loving  God.  The 
ethical  and  religious  come  here  inevitably 
together.  To  refuse  to  recognize  these 
facts  of  the  immanent  laws  of  our  beings, 
is  to  run  away  from  life  altogether. 

One  may  approach  the  matter  from  a 
slightly  different  angle,  when  he  recognizes, 
as  among  those  facts  that  underlie  man's 
whole  ideal  struggle,  the  fact  that  the  sense 
of  beauty,  the  sense  of  truth,  and  the  sense 
of  duty  belong  to  normal  human  endow- 
ment. Men  have  differed  widely  enough 
in  their  judgments  as  to  what  is  beautiful, 
as  to  what  is  true,  as  to  what  is  duty ;  but 
that  a  creature  had  no  sense  of  beauty  or 
truth  or  duty  would  seem  to  us  equivalent 


8o  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

to  asserting  that  the  human  plane  had  not 
been  reached  at  all.  That  is,  we  simply 
cannot  question  man's  ideal  endowment. 
At  the  lowest,  he  is  inevitably  more  than  a 
mere  creature  of  the  senses.  He  cannot 
find  all  his  life  only  in  the  change  of  raw 
sensations.  Man  shall  not  live  by  bread 
alone.  To  refuse  to  face  this  fact  insures 
inner  discord,  —  makes  it  certain  that  one 
must  live  at  cross  purposes  with  himself. 
What  would  it  not  mean,  on  the  other  hand, 
honestly  to  take  account  of  this  fact,  that 
in  the  fundamental  structure  of  one's  being, 
one  is  made  forever  to  seek  truth,  to  fulfill 
duty,  to  reach  out  not  only  for  the  appre- 
hension, but  for  the  embodiment,  of  some 
real  beauty  of  life  ? 

To  face  these  more  basic  facts  of  human 
nature  would  mean  also  to  ask  the  question, 
How  deep-going  is  religious  faith  ?  how 
essential  is  it  to  normal  humanity?  And 
one  can  hardly  follow  to  the  end  that  in- 
quiry without  seeing,  as  I  have  elsewhere 
pointed  out,^  that  a  faith  essentially  re- 
ligious, logically  underlies  all  our  reason- 
ing,  all   work  worth   doing,   all   strenuous 

^  Personal  and  Ideal  Elements  in  Education,  pp.  90-98. 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE 


moral  endeavor,  all  earnest  social  ser- 
vice. I  do  not  repeat  the  argument  here  ; 
but  even  so  absolutely  fundamental  is 
religion,  that  we  must  affirm  and  reaffirm 
it  implicitly  in  every  act  of  our  lives.  For 
in  every  one  of  the  realms  named  we  are 
constantly  obliged  virtually  to  assert  the 
possibility  of  a  goal  that  assimies  a  larger 
reason  and  plan  and  purpose  than  can  be 
given  by  finite  beings.  We  seem  quite 
unable  otherwise  to  bring  into  our  lives 
unity  or  meaning  or  harmony  or  permanent 
value.  If  we  may  not  assert  the  essential 
certainty  of  religious  faith,  we  seem  doomed 
only  to  'fruitless  agony  of  thought,  every- 
where baffled  of  its  goal.  And  then  it  is 
useless  to  talk  about  the  possibility  of 
rational  thinking  at  all.  Are  we  facing 
this  basic  faith,  involved  in  our  very  natures, 
and  building  consistently  upon  it  ?  In  the 
background  of  all  the  rest  of  life,  thus,  lies 
the  mighty  all-inclusive  fact  of  God  and  of 
the  possibility  of  living  relation  to  him. 
If  we  have  any  access  to  ultimate  reality 
at  all,  then,  the  thoughtful  man  will  not 
need  to  feel  that  he  must  manufacture  a 
religion    for    himself    or    for    others.     He 


82  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

knows  men's  need  of  God,  and  he  believes 
that  the  fact  of  God  is  so  great  a  fact,  that 
it  will  verify  itself  to  those  who  will  give  it 
access  to  mind  and  life.  Nevertheless,  this 
supreme,  all-inclusive  fact  of  God  and  of 
the  possibility  of  relation  to  him  is  not 
the  fact  first  reached,  and  is  not  to  be 
taken  as  a  matter  of  course  for  men. 
Rather  is  it,  as  has  been  implied,  the  out- 
come of  fidelity  to  many  other  facts,  that 
themselves  silently  asstmie  at  each  step  the 
reality  of  God. 

But  when  one  speaks  of  honest  adjust- 
ment to  the  facts  of  life,  he  must  think  not 
only  of  these  deeper  underlying  prerequisites 
of  all  human  endeavor,  which  we  have  been 
considering,  but  also  of  those  common  out- 
standing spiritual  realities  of  the  daily 
life  of  men. 

Of  these  daily  facts  there  is,  to  begin 
with,  the  fact  of  our  double  nature :  that 
we  have  that  in  us  which  links  us  with  the 
animal  downward,  and  that  in  us  which 
links  us  not  less  certainly  with  God  upward. 
No  man  who  means  to  live  the  life  that  he 
ought  to  live  can  leave  that  fact  out  of 
account.     We  are  not  to  be  spared  the  fight, 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  83 

which  that  fact  involves.  Whatever  one 
beheves  about  evolution,  he  cannot  doubt 
in  his  own  experience  the  fact  of  the  inner 
conflict  between  flesh  and  spirit.  And 
neither  for  himself,  nor  for  those  whom  most 
he  loves,  may  the  earnest  man  forget  this 
fact  or  think  the  fight  quickly  over.  There 
is  a  paradox  involved,  for  the  goal  is  not 
ascetic,  and  the  sense  good  is  a  real  good. 
And  yet  the  struggle  cannot  be  evaded. 
The  fact  of  man's  double  nature,  moreover, 
concerns  not  youth  alone  ;  for  the  sensuality 
of  the  older  man,  though  more  cold-blooded, 
may  be  even  more  deadly  and  deadening 
than  the  hot  passion  of  youth.  And  there 
is  a  subtler  sensuality  that  is  hardly  rec- 
ognized as  such  at  all.  We  are  all  tempted, 
under  the  pressure  of  our  present  material 
civilization,  to  allow  in  some  form  or  other 
the  material  aspect  of  things  to  dominate 
the  ideal,  to  make  the  sense  world  really 
supreme.  But  it  is  still  as  true  as  when 
the  words  were  first  written,  that  all  of  us 
have  need  to  guard  ourselves  against  the 
''lust  of  the  flesh,  and  the  lust  of  the  eyes, 
and  the  vainglory  of  life."  It  was  not  for 
nothing  that  one  of  the  world's  best  fighters 


84  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

said  of  himself:  *'I  biiffet  my  body  and 
bring  it  into  bondage :  lest  by  any  means, 
after  that  I  have  preached  to  others,  I 
myself  should  be  rejected."  ''I  therefore 
so  run,"  he  says,  ''as  not  uncertainly; 
so  fight  I,  as  not  beating  the  air."  When 
does  a  man  really  face  the  fact  of  his  double 
nature  ?  Not  until  he  is  making  it  sure 
that  he  is  living  his  life  on  such  a  plan  that 
the  hold  of  the  animal  on  him  is  steadily 
weakening,  and  the  hold  of  the  Godlike 
on  him  is  steadily  strengthening. 

Side  by  side  with  this  fact  of  our  double 
nature  is  the  fact  of  the  fateful  gift  of  will. 
We  can  choose  with  God,  we  can  choose 
against  God,  and  this  choice  can  be  made 
by  no  other.  It  is  no  merely  metaphysical 
question  which  is  thus  raised.  Whatever 
one's  philosophical  formulation  of  the  per- 
ennial question  of  freedom  and  necessity, 
no  one  doubts  that  men  have  much  to  do 
with  the  shaping  of  their  own  characters. 
It  was  one  of  the  least  sentimental  of  our 
poets  who  compared  this  fateful  fact  of 
will  with  that  other  fact,  that  men  often 
think  so  solemn  —  the  fact  of  death,  to 
remind  us  that  this  is  still  more  solemn : 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  85 

Men  think  it  is  an  awful  sight, 

To  see  a  soul  just  set  adrift, 
On  that  drear  voyage  from  whose  night 

The  ominous  shadows  never  lift ; 
But  'tis  more  awful  to  behold 

A  helpless  infant,  newly  bom. 
Whose  little  hands  unconscious  hold 

The  keys  of  darkness  and  of  mom. 

And  he  goes  on  to  make  the  man  who  has 
come  down  to  an  unworthy  end  say : 

Mine  held  them  once ;   I  flung  away 

Those  keys  that  might  have  open  set 
The  golden  sluices  of  the  day. 

But  clutch  the  keys  of  darkness  yet ; 
I  hear  the  reapers  singing  go 

Into  God's  harvest.     I  who  might 
With  them  have  chosen,  here  below, 

Grope  shuddering  at  the  gates  of  night. 

What  would  it  be  rationally,  squarely, 
honestly,  to  face  this  fateful  gift  of  will  ? 
Not  less,  one  must  think,  than  this  :  that 
one  should  make  it  certain,  once  more,  that 
he  is  living  his  life  on  such  a  plan  as  to  in- 
sure that  the  righteous  will  is  gaining  in 
steadiness,  in  breadth  of  application,  in 
depth  of  application,  and  in  skill  and  tact 
and  delicacy  of  application.  It  ought  to  be 
true,  that  is,  as  the  years  pass  over  our 


86  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

heads,  that  we  should  find  it  more  and  more 
second  nature  steadily  to  do  that  which  we 
believe  we  ought  to  do.  There  should  be 
less  feeble  vacillation  of  will.  It  ought 
to  be  true,  with  our  widening  knowledge, 
that  we  should  now  be  awake  to  whole 
spheres  of  human  life  in  which  we  have  ob- 
ligations, to  which  we  used  to  be  blind. 
It  ought  to  be  true  as  a  man  deepens  the 
meaning  of  life  for  himself  in  his  own  ex- 
perience, that  there  should  deepen  at  the 
same  time  a  sense  of  his  obligation  to  his 
fellow  men.  And  it  ought  to  be  true  as 
he  comes  into  a  sense  of  what  fine,  reverent, 
personal  relations  mean,  that  he  should  be 
capable  now  of  a  tact  and  skill  and  delicacy 
that  his  youth  could  not  know. 

With  the  fact  of  wil ,  the  honest  man 
must  recognize,  also,  the  fact  of  responsi- 
bility, —  that  we  are  members  one  of 
another.  For  this  is  of  the  very  essence 
of  the  moral  universe.  This  conviction 
should  peculiarly  characterize  this  age, 
that  glories  in  its  claim  to  be  called  the  age 
of  the  social  consciousness.  For  if  we  have 
become  convinced  that  economically, 
socially,    and   politically  we  are  members 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  87 

one  of  another,  we  can  hardly  fail  to  draw 
the  certain  inference  that  we  are  not  less 
members  one  of  another  in  the  highest 
ranges  of  our  lives.  And  no  man  belongs 
truly  to  the  age  of  the  social  consciousness 
who  does  not  recognize  the  fact  of  this 
mutual  responsibility  as  not  alone  inevit- 
able, but  as  desirable  and  indispensable ; 
who  would  be  willing  if  he  could,  to  have 
his  life  cut  off  from  these  rich  relations  to 
other  lives.  The  man  who  refuses  to  face 
this  fact  of  responsibility,  who  can  say  of 
himself  —  "I  do  not  care  to  influence  any- 
body," needs  to  be  reminded  that  the  in- 
evitable relations  of  his  life  make  it  certain 
that  he  cannot  go  up  or  down  alone ;  that 
he  has  no  choice  as  to  whether  he  shall 
influence  others ;  he  can  only  choose  what 
kind  of  influence  he  shall  exert.  Steadily, 
hour  in,  hour  out,  day  in,  day  out,  we  are 
all  tending  to  bring  to  our  level,  with  the 
whole  power  of  whatever  personality  we 
have,  those  about  us,  pulling  them  down  to 
our  level,  or  raising  them  up  to  it,  as  the 
case  may  be.  We  are  inextricably  members 
one  of  another. 

And  how  powerful  a  motive  this  inevitable 


RELIGION   AS   LIFE 


connection  of  one's  life  with  others'  lives 
may  be,  William  Canton  suggests  in  the 
poem  addressed  to  his  little  daughter,  in 
which  he  compares  her  influence  to  the 
power  of  the  angels. 

God's  angels,  dear,  have  six  great  wings, 

Of  silver  and  of  gold. 
Two  round  their  heads  ;  two  round  their  hearts ; 

Two  round  their  feet  they  fold. 

The  angel  of  a  man  I  know, 

Has  just  two  hands  —  so  small ! 
Yet  they're  more  strong  than  six  gold  wings 

To  keep  him  from  a  fall. 

In  his  own  darkest  and  weakest  hours,  when 
it  seems  to  him  that  he  does  not  care  at  all 
for  himself,  let  a  man  use  with  himself  this 
powerful  motive ;  let  him  make  it  clear 
to  himself  that  it  is  utterly  impossible  for 
him  to  go  down  alone  or  to  go  up  alone. 
One  cannot  fail  and  not  make  the  fight 
harder  for  every  other  life  that  is  touched 
by  his ;  and  one  cannot  conquer  and  not 
help  thereby  every  one  of  these  related 
lives.  The  moral  and  religious  life  of  one 
city  of  one  of  our  great  central  states  re- 
ceived a  deadly  thrust,  because  two  men 
widely  known  and  greatly  trusted  proved 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  89 

utterly  false.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  our 
great  privilege,  by  simple  fidelity  of  life, 
to  make  another's  fight  less  bitter,  to  make 
it  easier  for  him  to  believe  in  truth  and 
honor  and  purity  and  God.  We  are  mem- 
bers one  of  another. 

The  earnest  man  cannot  fail  to  face,  also, 
the  fact  of  men's  capacity  for  indefinite 
growth.  Breathing  through  the  whole  life 
of  the  earnest  man,  there  is  to  be  the  con- 
viction, that~there  came  a  time  in  the  history 
of  the  world,  when  there  v/as  introduced 
a  creature  in  whom  psychical  changes 
meant  more  than  physical ;  a  being  once 
for  all  made  capable  of  endless  progress  in 
knowledge,  in  power,  in  character.  Brown- 
ing has  emphasized  for  all  this  generation 
that  it  is  the  great  single  characteristic 
of  man  that  he  is  a  growing  creature,  and 
that  to  that  growth  no  limits  can  be  set. 
A  man  is  turning  his  back,  therefore,  upon 
his  destiny  as  a  man,  unless  he  is  making 
sure  that  he  is  laying  foundations  broad 
and  strong  for  endless  development.  He 
must  lay  claim  here  to  his  destiny  as  a 
man,  and  make  sure  of  the  glory  of  life 
through  certain  and  steady  growth.     For 


go  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

the  opportunity  of  this  endless  progress  for 
man  lays  upon  him  at  once  the  universal 
obligation  of  growth.  He  owes  a  steadily 
developing  life  to  himself,  to  his  friends, 
to  the  world,  to  God.  He  owes  it  to  him- 
self to  plan  for  persistent  growth.  In 
the  words  of  President  Jordan,  ''Your 
first  duty  in  life  is  toward  your  after-self. 
So  live  that  your  after-self  —  the  man  you 
ought  to  be  —  may  in  his  time  be  possible 
and  actual."  Only  through  such  a  growing 
self,  too,  can  he  meet  the  obligation  he 
owes  to  his  friends,  to  the  world,  or  to  God. 
No  one  can  claim,  therefore,  to  be  facing 
squarely  and  honestly  this  momentous  fact 
of  his  capacity  for  indefinite  progress,  unless 
he  is  making  certain  of  constant  develop- 
ment. In  the  last  analysis,  as  one  has  so 
often  to  see,  we  none  of  us  have  anything 
to  give  but  ourselves,  and  those  selves 
must  be  steadily  richer  and  more  signifi- 
cant. It  may  well  stir  in  any  man  an 
endless  ambition,  that  he  is  made  on  so 
large  and  divine  a  plan  that  to  his  growth 
no  limits  can  be  set.  One  large  element, 
too,  of  a  man's  courage  in  his  work  must  be, 
that  he  recognizes  that  he  works  for  others, 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  91 


also,  who  are  capable  of  this  same  endless 
progress  into  likeness  to  God,  and  therefore 
for  those  who  are  abundantly  worthy  of 
the  faithful  exercise  of  every  power  he  has, 
and  of  all  needed  sacrifice. 

But  if  the  honest  man  is  to  recognize, 
on  the  one  hand,  as  undoubted,  this  capac- 
ity of  men  for  endless  growth,  he  cannot 
shut  his  eyes,  on  the  other,  to  the  equally 
certain  fact  of  sin,  which  our  modem 
novels  and  the  daily  paper,  as  well  as  the 
ancient  religious  literatures  of  the  world, 
are  forced  to  admit  as  an  abiding  fact.  It 
is  quite  as  imperative  that  one  should  not 
forget  thsct  sin  is  a  growing  fact,  as  well,  in 
a  man's  life,  unless  he  is  steadfastly  setting 
his  face  in  the  right  direction.  With  his 
faith  in  God,  and  his  faith  in  man's  capacity 
for  endless  progress,  the  man  who  is  to 
throw  himself  with  earnestness  into  the 
struggle  of  the  race  for  character  and  spirit- 
ual achievement,  has  to  recognize  the  fact 
of  sin  with  absolute  honesty  but  not  with 
discouragement.  The  optimism  of  Jesus 
is  no  blind  and  shallow  optimism.  It  is 
able  to  take  into  account  the  darkest  facts. 
Nor  can  the  honest  man  deny  in  his  own 


92  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

experience  the  fact  of  sin.  He  knows  how 
often  he  has  seen  far  better  than  he  has  done. 
And  the  unfulfilled  vision  is  his  unanswered 
accuser.  He  needs  to  be  vigilantly  watch- 
ful, therefore,  not  so  much  against  the 
onsets  of  overwhelming  attacks,  as  against 
that  subtle,  gradual,  deadly  deterioration 
that  damns  himself  and  damns  those  for 
whom  he  would  labor.  One  need  not  fear 
for  those  whom  most  he  loves,  that  they 
shall  suddenly,  under  some  tempest  of 
temptation,  be  swept  over  the  precipice 
of  outrageous  wickedness.  That  practi- 
cally never  happens.  Long  before  the 
gross  defiance  of  righteousness  arrived,  the 
battle  was  lost  within,  the  inner  guard  had 
been  broken  down ;  the  man  had  failed  in 
the  inner  citadel.  In  confronting  frankly 
the  fact  of  sin,  therefore,  our  chief  fear 
must  be  of  that  subtle  and  gradual  deteriora- 
tion that  sets  in  and  goes  on  almost  uncon- 
sciously to  the  man,  until  it  eats  out  the 
very  heart  of  his  life.  This  is  the  lesson  of 
that  terrible  book  of  Harold  Frederic,  The 
Damnation  of  Theron  Ware,  For  the  dam- 
nation of  Theron  Ware,  the  young  minister, 
was  that  he  had  laid  down  his  inner  guard, 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  93 

and  had  started  so  gradually  upon  the 
down  plane,  that  he  could  still  think  of 
himself  as  sleek  and  prosperous,  while  in 
fact  he  was  false  and  hollow  and  corrupt. 
No  one  is  honestly  facing,  then,  the  fact 
of  sin,  unless  he  is  making  it  certain  that  he 
is  living  his  life  on  such  a  plan,  as  insures 
that,  so  far  as  in  him  lies,  sin  shall  be  for 
him  and  for  all  those  committed  to  him,  a 
steadily  lessening,  not  a  growing,  fact. 

Moreover,  it  is  given  us  to  set  side  by  side 
with  this  dark  fact  of  sin,  the  endless, 
glorious  miracle  of  unselfish  himian  love. 
Let  a  man  give  this  fact  its  full  weight. 
In  spite  'of  pettiness,  and  falseness,  and 
selfishness,  what  a  wealth  of  human  love 
the  world  contains  !  No  man  can  have 
seen  even  a  little  of  love's  marvelous  ca- 
pacity for  joyful  sacrifice,  and  feel  that  he 
can  have  deserved  such  a  love.  At  its 
best,  this  unselfish  human  love  is  a  rebuke 
of  our  own  smallness  and  a  challenge  to  a 
nobler  self-giving,  and  at  the  same  time  a 
great  ground  of  faith  in  the  Love  back  of 
the  universe.  What  can  more  surely  steady 
a  man's  faith  in  God,  and  strengthen  the 
desire  for  some  share  in  his  eternal  self- 


94  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

giving,  than  this  perpetual  witness  of  daily 
human  love  ? 

Among  the  outstanding  realities  of  life, 
also,  there  cannot  be  left  out  of  account, 
for  the  man  who  means  to  face  the  facts, 
the  fact  of  death.  One  may  quite  sympa- 
thize with  his  generation  in  the  feeling, 
that  the  best  preparation  for  death  is  to 
think  upon  living,  not  upon  dying; 
and  yet  in  his  more  thoughtful  moments 
be  compelled  to  confess  that  the  reaction 
from  the  older  point  of  view  has  gone  quite 
too  far,  if  it  has  come  to  mean  that  the 
thoughtful  man  is  to  leave  quite  out  of 
account  that  one  inevitable  experience  that 
comes  to  all.  The  thoughtful  man  can- 
not wish  to  go  like  a  dumb  brute  into  the 
experience  of  death.  Rather  will  he  prefer 
to  say  with  Browning  : 

I  would  hate  that  Death  bandaged  my  eyes  and 

forebore 
And  bade  me  creep  past. 

He  will  wish  with  open  eye  and  mind  to 
face  that  inevitable  experience  of  death, 
to  get  out  of  it  all  that  God  has  in  it  for 
him.  That  will  mean  that  he  will  need  to 
forecast  the  memories  that  will  be  his  in 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  95 

that  hour;  that  he  will  need  to  anticipate 
how  life  is  going  to  appear  to  him  as  he 
looks  back  over  it  from  its  end,  and  to  ask 
himself  whether  that  backward  vision  is 
going  to  show  that  in  the  years  of  his  life 
he  has  seen  things  in  anything  like  their 
true  proportion.  In  that  retrospect  will 
the  manifestly  greater  interests  of  life  loom 
large,  or  be  seen  to  have  played  an  insig- 
nificant part  in  the  earthly  years  ?  The 
thoughtful  man  must  wish  to  make  sure, 
too,  who  his  visitants  are  going  to  be  in  this 
experience  of  the  closing  of  the  earthly  life. 
And  it  is  a  part  of  his  business  as  one  who 
lives  not  for  himself  alone,  to  secure  not 
only  for  himself,  but,  so  far  as  it  lies  in  his 
power,  for  all  those  whom  his  life  touches, 
that  the  faces  that  front  them  in  the  final 
hour  shall  be  friendly  faces,  and  that  no 
soul  committed  in  any  way  to  him  shall 
have  then  to  say  : 

There  my  dead  Youth  doth  wring  its  hands, 
And  there,  with  eyes  that  goad  me  yet, 

The  ghost  of  my  Ideal  stands. 

God  bends  from  out  the  deep  and  says : 

"I  gave  thee  the  great  gift  of  life ; 

Wast  thou  not  called  in  many  ways  ? 

Are  not  my  earth  and  heaven  at  strife  ?  " 


96  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

Oh,  glorious  Youth,  that  once  was  mine  ! 

Oh,  high  Ideal !  all  in  vain 
Ye  enter  at  this  ruined  shrine 

Whence  worship  ne'er  shall  rise  again. 
The  bat  and  owl  inhabit  here ; 

The  snake  nests  in  the  altar-stone ; 
The  sacred  vessels  molder  near, 

The  image  of  the  God  is  gone. 

The  fact  of  death  leads,  thus,  at  once  to 
the  fact  of  accountability  to  God  for  life 
intrusted.  One  may  set  aside  as  simply 
pictorial,  if  he  will,  the  Biblical  representa- 
tions of  a  great  single  solemn  assize ;  still, 
so  far  as  I  can  see,  the  essential  fact  of  ac- 
countability forever  abides.  I  did  not 
bestow  my  nature  on  myself,  and  I  cannot 
deny,  therefore,  the  trust  of  that  peculiar 
individuality  that  has  come  into  my  hands. 
For  that  individuality  I  am  accountable. 
I  cannot  resist  the  sense  of  calling,  of  divine 
vocation  so  involved.  These  plain  facts  of 
my  nature  themselves  make  me  feel  that, 
in  some  high  sense,  I  am  "sent"  into  the 
world.  And  in  this  calling  of  my  own  in- 
dividuality, I  catch  some  glimpse,  at  least, 
of  a  Good  Power  back  of  all,  to  whom  I 
must  return  account  of  my  stewardship 
of    this    unique    personality,    not    self-be- 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  97 

stowed.  For  if  there  be  any  rationality  in 
the  universe  at  all,  then  the  life  into  which 
we  go  must  be  the  logical  and  inevitable  out- 
come of  the  life  lived  here.  In  this  sense, 
at  least,  some  judgment  must  always  be 
passed  upon  the  life,  and  accoimtability 
must  always  stand.  In  its  essence,  there- 
fore, it  remains  as  true  to-day  as  when 
Paul  wrote  it,  ''So  then  every  one  of  us 
shall  give  account  of  himself  to  God." 
When  one  faces,  then,  with  any  real  thought- 
fulness  the  mysterious  trust  of  life,  and  the 
sobering  challenge  of  his  divinely  given 
individuality,  it  cannot  seem  to  him  strange 
that  a  great  American  statesman  should 
have  affirmed,  that  the  most  solemn  thought 
that  ever  occupied  his  mind  was  the  thought 
of  his  personal  accountability  to  God. 
For  we  are  not  animals,  who  can  live  con- 
tent on  the  sense  plane.  ''A  spark  dis- 
turbs our  clod";  and  when  we  would 
quench  it,  our  own  self-contempt  seems 
but  the  prophecy  of  a  still  diviner  judgment. 
The  fact  of  accountability  implies,  in 
turn,  the  fact  of  the  future  life.  We  can- 
not be  overwise  concerning  it,  however 
thoughtfully  we  have  studied  all  that  we 


98  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

can  know  about  it.  There  are  mani- 
festly many  interesting  and  curious  ques- 
tions concerning  it,  to  which  no  answer  has 
been  returned.  There  is  plainly  much  here 
that  we  cannot  know.  And  yet  there  is  not 
only  the  assurance  of  the  insight  of  Jesus 
and  of  the  whole  spirit  and  atmosphere  of 
his  life  for  the  reality  of  the  future  life ; 
but  the  further  fact  that  many  of  the  most 
thoughtful  in  all  generations  have  felt  the 
imperative  need  of  the  future  life  to  give 
any  adequate  meaning  to  this  life.  And, 
moreover,  so  tremendous  is  the  bare  possi- 
bility of  the  future  life,  that,  rationally, 
we  can  only  build  as  though  it  were  going 
to  be.  But  if  there  be  any  future  life  at 
all,  there  is  one  thing  concerning  it  that 
we  may  know :  every  man  must  live  it  out 
with  himself,  and  he  will  wish  to  make 
certain  that  he  is  going  to  be  decent  com- 
pany for  himself.  He  will  wish  so  honestly 
and  wisely  to  face  the  endless  future,  as  to 
make  sure  that  he  has  laid  such  foundations 
here,  that  the  self  with  which  he  is  to  spend 
the  eternal  years  is  to  be  good  company  — 
a  self  rich  and  interesting,  inspiring  and 
noble.     The  very  meaning  of  the  earthly 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  99 

life  must  be  that  men  are  here  to  learn  to 
live ;  that  here  and  now  they  are  to  live  a 
growing,  steadily  deepening  and  enriching 
life,  and  so  lay  indeed  foundations  deep  and 
broad  for  that  endless  growth  of  the  future 
life.  The  great  rewarding  factors  of  the 
future  life,  too,  as  of  the  present  life,  must 
inevitably  be  in  personal  associations  and 
significant  work.  But  how  much  either 
work  or  personal  associations  can  mean  to  a 
man,  must  depend  on  the  quality  of  the  self 
which  he  brings  to  them. 

There  is  still  one  more  fact  that  the  man, 
who  means  to  live  in  any  degree  for  others 
besides  himself,  may  not  forget :  the  fact 
of  his  need  of  help  for  other  men.  No 
thinking  man  can  face  the  sin  and  suffering 
and  ignorance  and  weakness  of  men,  the 
cramping,  deadening  conditions  in  which 
many  lives  are  lived,  and  not  see  that  he 
has  no  need  so  great  as  the  need  of  being 
able  to  give  adequate  help  to  the  inner  life 
of  other  men,  —  to  open  to  them  the  abiding 
springs  of  being.  Have  we  any  message  of 
life  quite  large  enough  and  deep  enough  to 
fill  the  need  of  men  ?  Have  we  ever  made 
it  real  to  ourselves  that  somewhere  down  the 


loo  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

years,  time  and  again,  we  shall  find  our- 
selves face  to  face  with  souls  at  a  crisis ; 
souls  desperately  in  need  ?  It  will  not 
always  look  so  on  the  outside.  No  ob- 
server may  be  able  to  tell  of  the  inner 
struggle,  or  of  the  despairing  appeal  that 
is  made  to  us.  The  common  things  will 
seem  to  go  on.  But  here  and  there,  there 
will  be  given  to  us  a  glimpse  into  the  depths 
of  another  life,  and  we  shall  a  little  under- 
stand how  great  the  need  is.  And  if  that 
other  is  some  one  for  whom  we  greatly  care 
—  a  son,  a  daughter,  or  nearest  friend  — 
how  sternly  must  come  home  to  us  our 
spiritual  destitution  !  If  for  us,  then,  our 
great  convictions  are  all  in  the  past,  our 
great  decisions  unrenewed,  our  ideals 
dimmed,  and  our  hopes  buried,  what  can 
be  our  word  of  help  ?  Here  again  every 
thoughtful  man  must  be  driven  back  to 
God,  to  the  sources  of  life,  to  make  sure 
that  there  his  own  life  has  been  refreshed, 
enriched,  and  deepened,  so  that  he  may  now 
speak  out  of  his  own  experience  and  with 
convincing  authority  of  the  ''good  news  of 
God."  There  is  one  prayer  that  the  ear- 
nest soul,  who  wishes  to  live  in  any  degree 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  loi 

outside  himself,  it  would  seem,  must  be 
perpetually  offering  to  God :  Lord,  speak 
to  me,  and  then  speak  through  me.  For 
it  is  perfectly  certain  that  we  cannot  bring 
home  to  another  soul  with  the  grip  of  con- 
viction, a  truth  that  has  not  first  of  all 
gripped  us,  and  God  must  first  have  spoken 
to  us  that  he  may  speak  through  us. 

In  this  search  for  adequate  help  for  other 
men  in  sorrow  and  sin  and  desperate  need, 
the  thoughtful  man  will  find  himself  coming 
back  of  necessity  again  and  again  into  the 
presence  of  the  great  prophetic  souls  as 
the  most  important  facts  of  human  history. 
Here  are 'facts  never  to  be  ignored.  Here 
are  insight  and  courage  and  faith  and  love. 
Here  is  deep  experience  of  the  spiritual 
world.  Here  is  assured  relation  to  God. 
Nothing  else  conceivable  can  throw  such 
light  on  the  meaning  of  life  and  the  nature 
of  God,  as  the  great  personalities  of  his- 
tory. And  the  greatest  have  never  been 
satisfied  on  the  sense  plane.  They  bear 
witness  to  ideal  aims,  and  disclose  a  faith 
in  something  greater  than  themselves. 
Even  when  the  immediate  ends  of  their 
religious    struggle    are    mistaken    ends,    as 


I02  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

in  the  long  history  of  asceticism,  they  still 
testify  to  the  reality  of  the  unseen  and 
eternal.  Are  we  taking  these  transcendent 
facts  of  the  great  prophetic  personalities 
of  the  race  fairly  into  account,  and  giving 
them  their  due  weight  ? 

In  the  line  of  these  preeminent,  prophetic 
personalities  of  the  race,  stands  transcendent 
the  figure  of  Jesus.  If  persons  must  always 
be  for  us  the  most  significant  facts  of  his- 
tory, Jesus  cannot  fail  to  be  history's 
supreme  fact,  —  a  fact  that  deepens  every 
other  fact  of  life.  At  the  end  of  every  in- 
quiry one  finds  his  majestic  figure  looming 
up,  shedding  light  where  else  were  darkness, 
and  hope  and  joy  where  else  were  despair. 
For,  setting  aside  every  theological  prop- 
osition, here  at  least  in  Jesus,  as  judged 
by  the  highest  standards  that  men  are  able 
to  apply,  is  the  best  life  that  the  earth 
has  seen,  the  surest  word  of  the  God  of  all 
being.  Here,  as  proved  out  of  the  expe- 
rience of  the  centuries,  are  the  world's  best 
ideals,  the  best  insight  into  the  laws  of  life, 
the  best  dynamic  for  life.  Because  here 
are  embodied  the  greatest  convictions  and 
the  highest  hopes.    The  least  inference,  it 


THE  REALITIES  OF  LIFE  103 

would  seem,  that  the  thoughtful  man  may- 
draw,  either  for  himself  or  for  others,  is 
that  no  man  can  pretend  to  be  in  dead 
earnest  in  the  attainment  of  character  for 
himself  or  of  the  message  of  help  for  other 
men,  who  is  not  putting  himself  steadily 
and  intimately  into  touch  with  that  central 
life,  to  take  on  as  of  second  nature  Christ's 
thoughts  and  feelings  and  purposes ;  to 
allow  him  to  be  to  him  all  that  he  can. 
Not  until  then  will  a  man  have  proved 
himself  in  earnest  either  for  himself  or  for 
others. 

And  through  this  transcendent  fact  of 
Christ  the  thoughtful  man  looks  out  with 
other  eyes  upon  all  the  other  facts  of  life. 
Through  him  he  sees  the  heart  of  God. 
Seen  in  the  light  of  the  great  personality  of 
Jesus,  he  can  face  with  cheer  and  courage 
and  mighty  hope  in  his  heart  all  these  other 
fateful  facts  of  life :  those  deep  underlying 
prerequisites  of  all  human  endeavor  — 
the  laws  of  our  natures,  man's  sense  of 
beauty  and  truth  and  duty,  and  the  in- 
evitableness  of  religious  faith ;  and  those 
other  outstanding  spiritual  realities  of  the 
daily  life  —  the  fact  of  man's  double  nature, 


I04  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

of  the  gift  of  will,  of  the  inevitable  way  in 
which  he  is  bound  up  in  the  bundle  of  life 
with  all  other  lives,  the  fact  of  man's  capac- 
ity for  indefinite  growth  in  knowledge  and 
power  and  character  and  fellowship  with 
the  living  God,  the  dark  fact  of  sin,  the 
irradiating  fact  of  human  love,  the  inevitable 
fact  of  death,  the  fact  of  accountability, 
and  of  the  future  life,  and  of  the  need  of 
help  for  other  men.  It  was  something 
like  this,  I  suppose,  that  was  in  the  mind  of 
Browning  when  he  makes  the  aged  John 
say: 

Then  stand  before  that  fact,  that  Life,  and  Death ; 
Stay  there  at  gaze,  till  it  dispart,  disspread, 
As  though  a  star  should  open  out,  all  sides, 
Grow  the  world  on  you,  as  it  is  my  world. 

These  facts  —  these  abiding,  common 
human  facts  —  need  no  exaggeration. 
They  need  only  to  be  squarely  faced. 
Whatever  other  changes  may  take  place, 
their  truth  makes  life  endlessly  significant. 


IV 

THE   SOURCES  OF   LIFE 

The  Abiding  Significance  of  the  Bible, 
AND  OF  Jesus 

We  have  already  seen  that  the  method 
of  Hfe  includes  as  indispensable,  honesty 
and  fellowship.  The  demand  for  such 
utter  honesty  compels  a  frank  facing  of 
the  realities  of  life,  just  reviewed.  And  the 
greatest  of  even  these  realities  were  found 
to  be  personal  lives.  The  method  of  fellow- 
ship, too,  impels  us  to  seek  rewarding  per- 
sonal associations.  We  have  also  seen 
that  the  two  supreme  services  that  any  man 
can  render  to  another  are,  to  lay  upon  him 
the  impress  of  a  high  and  noble  character 
by  being  the  kind  of  man  he  ought  to  be, 
and  to  share  with  that  other  the  sources 
of  his  own  life.  This  means,  of  course, 
that  the  greatest  needs  of  us  all  are  the  con- 
tagion of  high  and  significant  personalities, 
and  the  opportunity  of  sharing  in  their  best 

105 


io6  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

visions.  It  is  on  these  two  lines  that  we 
are  driven  so  surely,  even  in  this  twentieth 
century,  to  find  the  great  sources  of  our 
moral  and  religious  lives  in  the  Bible,  and 
in  its  supreme  personality,  Jesus. 

First  of  all,  is  it  mere  tradition  that 
sends  us  back  to  the  Bible  in  the  search  for 
spiritual  life  ?  Or  is  there  here  a  real  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest  ?  If  a  man's  greatest 
discovery,  next  to  the  discovery  of  God,  is 
the  discovery  of  himself,  and  if  the  complete 
discovery  of  himself  in  all  his  spiritual 
possibilities  involves  the  discovery  of  God, 
we  may  perhaps  get  a  new  light  on  the 
significance  of  the  Bible  for  our  spiritual 
life  if  we  think  of  it  as  an  aid  to  self-dis- 
covery.^ 

Has  the  Bible  any  preeminent  place 
in  bringing  the  man  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury to  such  deeper  self-discovery  ?  Es- 
pecially can  it  help  him  to  that  highest 
self-knowledge  that  implies  conscious  rela- 
tion with  God  ?  If  so,  it  must  be  because 
in  preeminent  degree  it  makes  available  a 

^  Use  is  here  made  of  a  portion  of  an  address  by  the 
author,  contained  in  the  transactions  of  the  ReHgious 
Education  Association. 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  107 

wealth  of  complex  experience,  puts  us  in 
direct  contact  with  the  most  significant 
personal  lives,  and  challenges  our  every 
power  even  more  by  the  depth  than  by  the 
breadth  of  its  appeal. 

It  is  worth  noting,  from  the  beginning, 
that  the  question  has  been  already  tested 
for  us  in  history.  As  a  simple  matter  of 
fact,  it  was  the  Christianity  of  the  Bible 
that  awoke  men  to  real  self-consciousness 
and  made  forever  impossible  the  simple, 
satisfied  attitude  of  antiquity  toward  life 
and  the  world,  and  compelled  the  bringing 
in  of  the  modern  romantic  spirit.  As 
another  has  said,  for  us  modem  men  "the 
fever  of  man's  conflict  has  passed  across*' 
the  face  of  nature  ;  ''the  shadow  of  htmian- 
ity  falls  wide,  darkening  the  world's  play- 
ground." In  the  words  of  a  great  philos- 
opher, "Christianity  had  demolished  this 
calm  self-suflicingness  of  the  secular  world" 
in  which  the  ancient  rested.  "There  began 
then  to  be  developed  for  the  first  time  that 
personal  consciousness  which  thenceforward, 
with  all  its  problems  —  freedom  of  the  will 
and  predestination,  guilt  and  responsibility, 
resurrection  and  immortality  —  has  given 


io8  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

a  totally  different  coloring  to  the  whole 
background  of  man's  mental  life,"  and 
which  no  modern  can  wholly  escape.  The 
Greek  artist,  compared  with  the  modern 
man,  Kedney  has  said,  "was  asleep  and 
wrapt  in  the  lovely  visions  of  the  En- 
chanted Ground,  as  though  there  were  no 
cavernous  depths  and  fearful  declivities, 
no  river  of  death  beyond."  To  the  same 
intent,  Paulsen  makes  ''the  longing  for 
the  transcendent"  one  of  the  truths  which 
''Christianity  has  engraven  upon  the  hearts 
of  men."  "Antiquity,"  he  adds,  "was 
satisfied  with  the  earth ;  the  modem  era 
has  never  been  wholly  free  from  the  feeling 
that  the  given  reality  is  inadequate." 

Now,  the  book  whose  influence  has  been 
thus  powerful  enough  to  draw  the  dividing 
line  of  demarcation  between  the  ancient 
and  the  modern  worlds,  and  to  awaken  the 
modern  man  to  that  which  is  most  char- 
acteristic in  his  consciousness,  can  hardly 
fail  of  preeminent  power  in  bringing  the 
individual  to  any  deep  discovery  of  him- 
self. It  cannot  be  spared  by  the  most 
modern  of  men. 

No  man,  certainly,  is  likely  to  come  to 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  109 

full  self-knowledge  independently  of  those 
influences  which  have  streamed  forth  from 
the  Bible.  It  both  suggests  the  laws  of  our 
life  and  tests  our  powers  in  too  concrete 
and  telling  a  fashion,  to  be  wisely  ignored. 

In  the  first  place,  the  Bible  is  a  most 
deeply  and  broadly  human  book,  and  so 
furnishes  that  appeal  of  complex  experience 
so  necessary  to  full  self -consciousness.  It 
touches  unerringly  the  whole  gamut  of  the 
deeper  human  emotions  and  aspirations, 
and  embodies  them  in  figures  that  mankind 
will  not  willingly  let  die.  The  experience 
of  the  race  increasingly  confirms  the  testi- 
mony of  'Lotze,  who  says  even  of  the  Old 
Testament,  that  ''for  the  most  faithful 
delineation  of  the  ever-recurring  funda- 
mental characteristics  of  human  life  .  .  . 
the  Hebrew  histories  and  hymns  are  im- 
perishable models."  And  he  adds,  con- 
cerning this  universal  human  appeal  of  the 
Scripture  :  ''The  treasures  of  classic  culture 
are  open  to  but  few,  but  from  that  eastern 
fountain  countless  multitudes  of  men  have 
for  centuries  gone  on  drawing  ennobling 
consolation  in  misery,  judicious  doctrines 
of  practical  wisdom,  and  warm  enthusiasm 


no  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

for  all  that  is  exalted."  A  book  with  such 
breadth  of  appeal  cannot  fail  to  stir  to 
larger  self-consciousness  any  man  who  will 
face  its  phenomena  with  attention. 

Moreover,  it  is  of  vital  importance  as 
an  aid  to  self -disco  very,  that  the  Bible 
should  be  in  such  rare  degree  a  personal 
book;  for  persons  are  chiefly  stirred  by 
persons.  And  the  Bible  is  so  instinct 
with  life,  that  it  is  hardly  possible  to  put 
the  point  of  a  needle  into  it  anywhere  with- 
out drawing  blood.  It  brings  us  face  to 
face  with  what  must  be  counted,  I  judge, 
—  when  estimated  as  to  its  value  for  the 
highest  life  of  men,  —  the  most  significant 
line  of  personalities  which  history  anywhere 
presents.  And  it  is  the  great  glory  of  the 
historical  and  critical  study  of  these  later 
years,  that  it  enables  us  to  see  these  pro- 
phetic men  as  living  personalities,  facing 
precise  problems  in  a  strong  developing 
career.  So  the  free  critic  Cornill  can  say  of 
Amos  :  ''Amos  is  one  of  the  most  marvelous 
and  incomprehensible  figures  in  the  history 
of  the  human  mind,  the  pioneer  of  a  process 
of  evolution  from  which  a  new  epoch  of 
humanity  dates."     And  Hosea  he  counts 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  iii 

"among  the  greatest  religious  geniuses 
which  the  world  has  ever  produced"; 
and  he  says  of  Isaiah:  "In  Isaiah  we  find 
for  the  first  time  a  clearly  grasped  con- 
ception of  universal  history."  It  is  into 
the  presence  of  such  personalities  that  the 
modern  historical  study  of  the  Bible  in- 
troduces us.  They  become  for  us  warm 
realities,  and  touch  us  as  never  before 
with  the  inspiration  of  a  personal  life  in 
which  God  works.  And  nothing  so  stirs 
and  fructifies  our  own  life,  nothing  so  brings 
us  to  glad  sense  of  our  own  higher  possibili- 
ties, as  even  this  partial  but  appreciative 
and  responsive  sharing  in  the  visions  of  the 
higher  man.  Like  children,  we  grow  best 
by  trying  to  measure  up  to  things  beyond 
our  present  capacity.  And  this  splendid 
vision  of  another  —  moral  or  religious  — 
which  we  have  partly  shared,  haunts  us 
perpetually,  until  we  have  tried  to  make  it 
our  own  in  deed  as  well  as  in  thought.  We 
come  to  a  new  self-consciousness.  Can 
the  most  modern  of  men  afford  to  miss  the 
contagion  of  this  line  of  spiritual  seers  ? 

For  it  is  only  true  to  say,  on  the  one  hand, 
even  of  the  Old  Testament,  that  it  is  the 


112  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

one  great  moral  book  of  antiquity.  As  I 
have  elsewhere  said,  ''it  is  not  a  mere  col- 
lection of  moral  aphorisms,  but  shows  the 
developing  moral  sense  everywhere,  in  every- 
thing. Character  is  really  the  supreme 
interest  in  this  book.  Among  all  the  an- 
cient peoples,  in  truth,  only  the  Jews  have 
the  modern  sense  of  sin,  and  the  Bible  is  in 
this  particular  the  only  ancient  book  with  a 
really  modern  tone.  Compared  with  these 
sober  Jews,  even  the  gifted  Greeks  are  but 
playing  children  in  their  sense  of  sin  and 
character.  This  clear  and  constantly  de- 
veloping ethical  tone  marks  out  the  Bible 
distinctly  from  all  other  ancient  books." 

And  when  one  passes  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment, this  powerful  ethical  impression  is 
only  increased.  One  may  well  say  with 
Sabatier:  "What  other  book  like  this  can 
awaken  dumb  or  sleeping  consciences,  re- 
veal the  secret  needs  of  the  soul,  sharpen 
the  thorn  of  sin  and  press  its  cruel  point 
upon  us,  tear  away  our  delusions,  humiliate 
our  pride,  and  disturb  our  false  serenity? 
What  sudden  lightnings  it  shoots  into  the 
abysses  of  our  hearts  !  What  searchings  of 
conscience  are  like  those  which  we  make  by 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  113 

this  light?"  And  all  this  means  that  in 
sober  fact  we  must  concede  to  the  Bible 
unrivaled  power  in  bringing  a  man  to  moral 
self -consciousness . 

In  a  similar  sense  it  must  be  said  on  the 
other  hand,  even  of  the  Old  Testament, 
that  it  is,  if  I  may  quote  myself  again, 
''the  one  great  religious  book  of  antiquity. 
Religious  books  in  abundance  of  course  the 
ancient  world  had,  and  we  need  not  under- 
estimate any  of  them.  But  for  the  actual 
life  of  the  civilization  of  this  twentieth  cen- 
tury only  the  Bible  is  of  prime  significance. 
These  Old  Testament  writers  have  been,  as 
a  matter -of  fact,  among  all  the  ancient 
writers,  the  world's  great  spiritual  and  re- 
ligious seers.  In  even  higher  degree  than 
we  owe  art  and  literature  to  the  Greeks,  and 
law  to  the  Romans,  do  we  owe  religion  to 
the  Jews.  Here  in  this  ancient  literature, 
whatever  the  critical  results,  is  contained 
the  record  of  the  preeminent  meetings  of 
God  with  men,  down  to  the  time  of  Christ." 

And  if  this  can  be  said  even  of  the  Old 
Testament,  how  much  more  is  it  true  of  the 
New,  with  its  vision  of  the  supreme  per- 
sonality of  Jesus.     And  for  spiritual  self- 


114  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

discovery,  this  is  most  significant.  For, 
just  so  surely  as  religious  interest  is  deeply 
laid  in  the  very  foundations  of  man's  nature  ; 
just  so  surely  as  religion  is  the  supreme 
factor  ''in  the  organizing  and  regulating 
of  our  personal  and  collective  life";  just 
so  surely  as  it  brings  us  into  the  highest 
personal  relation  of  which  we  are  capable 

—  the  relation  that  gives  reality  and  mean- 
ing and  value  to  all  other  relations ;  just 
so  surely  as  religion  is  thus  the  deepest 
experience  into  which  a  man  may  enter ; 

—  even  so  surely  must  that  book  which  is 
the  transcendent  religious  book  of  the 
world,  stir  our  whole  natures  as  nothing 
else  can  stir  them,  in  just  the  proportion 
in  which  we  lay  ourselves  open  to  its  in- 
fluence and  enter  with  appreciative  under- 
standing into  the  experiences  there  laid 
bare.  For  the  unity  of  our  natures  makes 
it  impossible  that  this  highest  appeal  should 
be  responded  to,  without  profound  influence 
upon  all  the  rest  of  our  life.  As  does  no 
other  book,  therefore,  the  Bible  brings  to 
consciousness  the  whole  man. 

As  the  record  of  the  progressive  seeking 
of  men  after  God,  and  of  the  progressive 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  115 

revelation  of  God  to  men,  moreover,  the 
Bible  offers  peculiar  help  in  the  develop- 
ment of  our  own  highest  consciousness ; 
for  it  enables  us  to  relive,  as  it  were,  in 
our  own  personal  experience  this  whole 
religious  life  of  the  world,  to  apply  thus, 
to  our  own  deepest  life-problems  a  real 
historical  method.  And  hardly  any  pro- 
cedure could  be  more  helpful  in  bringing 
us  to  intelligent  consciousness  of  ourselves 
than  this  retracing  of  the  most  important 
steps  in  the  working  out  of  character  and 
faith  in  the  world. 

But  the  Bible  is  all  this,  finally,  because 
it  is  above  all  else  a  book  of  honest  testi- 
mony to  experience.  Its  supreme  value  lies 
just  here.  For  the  testimony  of  another, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  our  chief  road  to  en- 
largement of  life.  Most  of  all,  it  is  through 
such  simple  honest  witness  that  the  New 
Testament  puts  us  face  to  face  with  the 
redeeming  personality  of  Jesus.  What- 
ever our  theories  about  the  Bible,  it  is  not 
as  compelling  authority,  but  as  simple 
honest  witness,  that  the  New  Testament 
brings  us  emancipating  power.  In  Herr- 
mann's words,  ''The  inner  life  of  Jesus  is 


ii6  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

stamped  on  the  testimony  of  men  who  have 
been  set  free  by  him.  In  this  way  has  it 
become  a  force  in  history,  and  in  no  other 
way  was  that  possible.  Hence  we  can  lay 
hold  on  it  and  make  it  ours  only  when  we 
let  the  witness  of  his  disciples  lay  hold  on 
us."  And  that  witness  the  Christian  ''finds 
in  Scripture  as  nowhere  else." 

Now  if  this  is  the  priceless  and  indispen- 
sable service  of  the  Bible,  it  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  man's  greatest  source  of 
spiritual  life  is  still  the  personality  of 
Jesus.  And  we  are  brought,  therefore, 
face  to  face  with  the  question  of  the  abiding 
significance  of  Jesus. ^ 

President  Harris  of  Amherst "  College 
said,  four  or  five  years  ago,  ''I  venture  to 
say  that  the  Protestant  Reformation  itself 
did  not  work  a  greater,  though  perhaps  a 
more  violent,  change  than  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century  has  marked  in  religious  thought, 
belief,  and  life."  In  this  short  twenty-five 
years  —  it    is    a    commonplace    to    say  — 

^  Another  line  of  treatment  is  followed  in  the  author's 
Theology  and  the  Social  Consciousness,  pp.  184-201.  Cf. 
also  Letters  on  the  Greatness  and  Simplicity  of  the  Christian 
Faith,  pp.  179-199. 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  117 

religion  has  felt  increasingly  the  influence 
of  natural  science,  of  the  conception  of 
evolution  in  particular,  of  the  new  psy- 
chology, of  the  new  science  of  sociology, 
and  its  practical  accompaniment  —  the 
social  consciousness,  the  application  of  the 
historic  spirit  to  religious  ideas  and  doctrines, 
the  whole  consequent  work  of  higher  criti- 
cism, the  great  movement  of  study  that  we 
denominate  "comparative  religion,"  the 
more  and  more  searching  investigation  of 
New  Testament  sources,  and  a  great  new 
practical  emphasis  and  test  in  philosophy. 
Is  it  possible  that  the  meaning  of  anything 
can  be  the  same  in  the  face  of  a  union  of 
movements  like  these  ?  Let  us  ask  it 
frankly.  Has  Jesus  still  supreme  meaning  ? 
And  yet,  Adolf  Hamack,  speaking  as 
Rector  of  the  world's  greatest  university, 
in  this  twentieth  century,  and  in  the  face 
of  all  these  movements,  can  begin  his 
famous  book,  What  is  Christianity?  with 
the  sentence,  ''The  great  English  philos- 
opher John  Stuart  Mill  has  somewhere 
observed  that  mankind  cannot  be  too  often 
reminded  that  there  was  once  a  man  of 
the  name  of  Socrates.     That  is  true ;    but 


ii8  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

still  more  important  is  it  to  remind  mankind 
again  and  again  that  a  man  of  the  name  of 
Jesus  Christ  once  stood  in  their  midst." 
It  seems  like  an  echo  of  the  apologetic  of 
the  New  Testament  writers.  And  it  is 
indeed  only  another  man  trying  to  say,  as 
honestly  to  his  own  generation  as  they  to 
theirs,  what  significance  this  man  Jesus  has 
for  him. 

What  significance  has  Jesus  for  us? 
Has  his  personality  still  indispensable  help 
to  give  us  ?  That  depends  upon  the  answer 
to  another  question.  What  do  we  want  ? 
The  shortest  and  truest  answer  to  that 
question  probably  is  in  the  single  word  — 
life.  We  want  the  fullest,  richest,  largest 
life  that  men  are  capable  of;  and  that 
would  at  least  require  answer  to  certain 
great,  insistent  questions  of  the  race,  like 
Kant's  famous  three :  What  can  I  know  ? 
What  ought  I  to  do  ?  For  what  may  I 
hope  ?  Few  of  us  would  doubt  —  what 
these  three  questions  imply  —  that  the 
largest  and  richest  life  cannot  be  lived 
without  convictions  and  ideals  and  hopes  ; 
and  the  answer  to  these  questions  must 
be  an  answer,   too,   that  gives  power  to 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  119 

live   this  life  of   convictions,   of  ideals,   of 
hopes. 

Now  if  we  are  to  come  any^v^here  into 
larger  life,  the  method,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  mental  and  spiritual  fellowship,  and  our 
greatest  need,  thus,  is  always  the  touch  of 
significant  lives.  The  continuous  miracle 
of  the  centuries  is  the  miracle  of  individual 
personality.  Large  and  rich  and  varied 
have  been  the  lives  of  earth's  greatest  ones, 
and  we  are  still,  in  the  daily  education  of  the 
schools,  sharing  the  visions  of  many  an 
ancient  Jew  and  Greek  and  Roman ;  and 
our  lives  would  be  poorer  without  them. 
But,  in  spite  of  all  the  questions  and  en- 
largements of  knowledge,  and  change  in 
points  of  view  of  this  whole  revolutionary 
time,  is  there  any  reasonable  doubt  that, 
for  the  living  of  that  larger  life  which  we 
modem  men  demand,  and  for  any  signifi- 
cant deepening  of  our  life,  no  personality 
has  any  help  to  give  comparable  with  that 
of  the  Galilean  Jesus  ?  Is  there,  even  to- 
day, any  surer  road  to  the  satisfaction  of 
the  thirst  for  life  in  all  its  profounder  mean- 
ings, than  that  a  man  should  count  himself 
—  with  whatever  questionings  —  first  and 


I20  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

foremost,  a  disciple  of  Jesus  ?  In  the  light 
of  all  that  modern  research  has  brought  to 
view,  let  us  put  to  Jesus  Kant's  three 
questions :  What  can  I  know  ?  What 
ought  I  to  do  ?     For  what  may  I  hope  ? 

And,  first,  has  Jesus  still  power  to  help 
the  modern  man  to  answer  the  question, 
What  can  I  know  ? 

Under  this  question,  the  most  insistent 
inquiry  of  all,  for  the  human  race,  is.  What 
can  I  know  of  God,  and  the  consequent 
meaning  of  my  own  life  ?  And  upon  the 
answer  to  that  question,  more  than  upon 
any  other,  depend  the  significance  and 
peace  and  joy  of  the  life  of  men.  And  for 
the  man  of  to-day  who  wishes  to  build  his 
faith  not  upon  ingenious  argument,  but 
upon  assured  and  well-recognized  facts, 
there  is  no  ground  so  sure  for  belief  in  the 
existence  and  in  the  love  of  a  real  living 
God  as  this  single  great  fact  of  Christ  him- 
self, and  of  the  results  that  have  flowed 
from  his  life.  The  argument  goes  upon  the 
simple  assumption  that  if  we  are  ever  to 
discern  the  real  nature  of  the  ultimate 
World-Ground,  our  best  light  must  come, 
not  from  the  lesser,  but  from  the  greatest 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  121 

and  most  significant  facts.  For  myself,  I 
see  no  way  to  doubt  that,  as  the  supreme 
person  of  history,  Christ  is  the  most  signifi- 
cant of  all  facts  known  to  us,  and  therefore 
the  best  basis  for  direct  and  decisive 
inference  to  the  nature  of  the  World- 
Ground  —  to  a  God  of  character  like  his 
own. 

And  so  Paulsen,  present-day  philosopher, 
after  speaking  of  various  dogmas  and  opin- 
ions often  asserted  to  be  of  the  essence  of 
Christianity,  says  for  himself:  ''But  if  I 
am  allowed  to  say  what  I  mean,  and  to  be- 
lieve what  I  can  understand  and  conceive, 
then,  unmindful  of  the  ridicule  of  the  scoffer 
and  the  hatred  of  the  guardian  of  literalism, 
I  may,  even  in  our  days,  confess  to  a  belief 
in  God  who  has  revealed  himself  in  Jesus. 
The  life  and  death  of  Jesus  make  plain  to 
me  the  meaning  of  life,  the  meaning  of  all 
things  in  general ;  but  that  which  enables 
me  to  live  and  shows  me  the  import  of  life, 
I  call  God  and  the  manifestation  of  God. 
The  most  upright,  truthful,  and  liberal- 
minded  man  may  subscribe  to  all  that  to- 
day as  openly  as  ever  before." 

Have  we  adequately  measured  the  great- 


122  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

ness  of  the  gift  to  our  modern  life  of  the 
personahty  of  whom  these  words  may  be 
truthfully  spoken  ?  Quite  aside  from  any 
doctrine  of  Messiahship,  and  unaffected 
by  the  Greek  theory  of  the  Logos,  must 
not  the  modern  man  who  truly  understands 
himself  still  say  unfeignedly,  with  Paul, 
''Thanks  be  to  God  for  his  unspeakable 
gift"  ?  For  it  is  here  implied,  it  should  be 
noticed,  that  there  is  much  more  in  Jesus 
than  bare  evidence  of  the  existence  of  God. 
There  is  "that  which  enables  me  to  live," 
says  Paulsen.  The  greatness  of  the  gift 
of  Jesus  is  not  merely  that  he  points,  thus, 
however  convincingly,  to  the  fact  of  God, 
but  that  he  means  to  bring  men  into  real 
fellowship  with  God. 

Here,  I  venture  to  think,  the  modern  age 
needs  Jesus  as  no  other  age  has  ever  needed 
him.  The  road  into  assured  communion 
with  God  for  earlier  generations  was  far 
easier  than  for  ours.  For  our  age  has  come 
in  such  preeminent  degree  to  scientific  and 
moral  self-consciousness  that  for  men  to-day 
the  previous  easier  roads  into  the  religious 
life  are  in  large  degree  closed.  The  psy- 
chological treatment,  for  example,  of  mysti- 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  123 

cal  experiences  has  made  it  impossible 
for  us  to  take  at  their  own  valuation  all 
kinds  of  ecstatic  states ;  and  we  can  feel 
no  surety  in  these  short  cuts  to  communion 
with  God  by  means  of  a  religious  experience 
that  cannot  bear  the  rational  and  ethical 
test.  It  is  just  at  this  point  that  Christian- 
ity has  its  supreme  gift  to  make  to  the  man  of 
to-day.  For  the  deeper  our  moral  conscious- 
ness, the  greater  our  sense  of  moral  need. 
In  Herrmann's  words,  ''We  feel  ourselves 
to  be  separated  from  God,  and  conse- 
quently crippled  in  our  faith  by  things 
which  troubled  the  ancients  very  little.  .  .  . 
Therefore,  'the  only  God  that  can  reveal 
himself  to  us  is  one  who  shows  himself 
to  us  in  our  moral  struggle  as  the  Power 
to  which  our  souls  are  really  subject.  This 
is  what  is  vouchsafed  to  us  in  the  revelation 
of  God  in  Jesus  Christ."  Christ  does  not 
merely  tell  us  of  God  and  of  his  holiness  and 
love  ;  he  does  much  more,  —  he  makes  us 
able  to  believe  this.  He,  and  no  other  as 
he,  searches,  humbles,  assures,  and  exalts 
us  at  the  same  time.  "When  once  he  has 
attracted  us  by  the  beauty  of  his  Person, 
and  made  us  bow  before  him  by  its  exalted 


124  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

character,  then,  even  amid  our  deepest 
doubts,  that  Person  of  Jesus  will  remain 
present  with  us  as  a  thing  incomparable,  the 
most  precious  fact  in  history,  the  most 
precious  fact  our  life  contains." 

What  language  can  measure  the  greatness 
of  the  gift  that  Jesus  thus  makes  to  the 
present  work-a-day  life  of  the  man  who 
thinks  ?  What  language  can  measure  the 
meaning  of  the  simple  fact  that  there  has 
once  appeared  among  us  men  a  life  that  can 
call  out  absolute  trust,  a  life  into  the  pres- 
ence of  which  we  may  come,  out  of  any  ex- 
perience, to  find  renewed  within  us  our 
deepest  faith,  our  highest  ideals  ? 

In  all  this  there  is  implied  that  in  the  life 
and  spirit  of  Jesus  we  have  the  best  light, 
also,  on  our  ethical  ideals,  that  human 
thought  and  experience  know  —  the  best 
answer  to  our  second  question,  What  ought 
I  to  do  ?  Ranke  only  expresses  the 
common  judgment  of  men  when  he  writes : 
''More  guiltless  and  more  powerful,  more 
exalted  and  more  holy,  has  naught  ever 
been  on  earth  than  his  conduct,  his  life 
and  his  death.  The  human  race  knows 
nothing  that  could  be  brought,  even  afar 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  125 

off,  into  comparison  with  it."  Here  is  for 
us  a  genuine  "personalized  conscience." 

As  to  Christ's  contribution  to  human  life 
at  a  single  point  of  ethical  significance, 
Hamack  can  say :  ' '  Jesus  Christ  was  the 
first  to  bring  the  value  of  every  human  soul 
to  light,  and  what  he  did  no  one  can  any 
more  undo.  We  may  take  up  what  rela- 
tion to  him  we  will :  in  the  history  of  the 
past  no  one  can  refuse  to  recognize  that  it 
was  he  who  raised  humanity  to  this  level." 
And  Wundt  and  Lotze  confirm  this  judg- 
ment. 

There  has  been  printed  in  editions  of 
many  thousands  and  translated  into  several 
modem  languages  a  plain  little  story  with 
the  subtitle  ''What  Would  Jesus  Do?" 
We  may  contend  that  the  question  is  not 
accurately  phrased,  but  we  cannot  doubt 
that  the  asking  of  that  question  has  a  sig- 
nificance for  men  that  the  substitution  of 
no  other  name  for  Jesus  would  permit  it 
for  a  moment  to  have.  It  was  John  Stuart 
Mill  who  wrote:  ''Not  even  now  could  it 
be  easy,  even  for  an  unbeliever,  to  find  a 
better  translation  of  the  rule  of  virtue  from 
the    abstract    into    the  concrete,    than    to 


126  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

endeavor  so  to  live  that  Christ  would  ap- 
prove of  our  life." 

Moreover,  though  one  sees  clearly  that 
Jesus  is  not  dealing  primarily  with  questions 
of  modern  culture  and  civilization,  it  re- 
mains true  that  the  modern  social  conscious- 
ness, in  its  most  earnest  endeavor,  can  do 
nothing  more  than  apply  the  spirit  of  his 
teaching  and  his  life  to  the  newer  problems 
of  our  own  day.  And  that  higher  civic 
virtue,  for  which  we  wait,  is  the  embodi- 
ment only  of  his  principle  :  ' '  He  that  would 
be  first  among  you  shall  be  servant  of  all." 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  in  the  words  of  a 
modern  historian,  ''The  image  of  Christ 
remains  the  sole  basis  of  all  moral  culture, 
and  in  the  measure  in  which  it  succeeds  in 
making  its  light  penetrate  is  the  moral  cul- 
ture of  the  nations  increased  or  diminished." 

With  these  answers  to  the  questions,  What 
can  I  know  ?  and  What  ought  I  to  do  ? 
Jesus  enables  the  most  modern  of  men  to 
turn  to  the  question.  For  what  may  I 
hope  ?  with  an  assurance  nowhere  else  to  be 
gained.^     The   greatest   proposition   of   re- 

^  Cf .  the  author's  The  Seeming  Unreality  of  the  Spirit- 
ual Life,  pp.  237  ff. 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  127 

ligious  faith  to  which  the  human  race  has 
attained,  or  to  which,  so  far  as  our  highest 
ethical  imagination  can  see,  it  ever  may 
attain,  is  the  simple  affirmation,  God  is 
like  Jesus.  And  if  God  is  like  Jesus,  life 
cannot  possibly  prove  a  mockery  for  any 
soul  who  has  been  true  to  the  inner  light. 
If  God  is  like  Jesus,  it  is  not  true  that  men 
have  been  made  on  a  plan  so  large  that  ages 
cannot  suffice  for  growth  equal  to  their 
capacity,  and  still  must  find  themselves 
snuffed  out  like  a  candle  in  the  dark,  after 
a  few  vain  years  of  aspiration,  of  cherished 
ideal,  of  hard-fought  struggle,  of  deepening 
friendship'  No,  it  is  not  true  !  Doubtless 
our  best  himian  achievement  is  faulty 
enough ;  but  his  life  and  vision  are  poor 
indeed,  who  has  not  caught  glimpses  of 
other  lives,  redolent  of  the  grace  and  mercy 
that  we  would  fain  ascribe  to  God ;  and 
God  knows,  if  there  be  a  God,  that  they 
deserve  to  go  on  and  not  to  die. 

Here,  again,  we  are  driven  directly  back 
to  Christ  for  our  strongest  assurance.  So 
Matheson  speaks,  in  a  passage  I  have  else- 
where quoted,  of  ''the  impossible  conse- 
quences of  a  denied  future."     "If  there  be 


128  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

no  immortality,  Christ  is  dead  —  the  purest, 
the  fairest,  the  loveHest  Hfe  that  ever 
breathed  has  become  less  than  the  napkin, 
less  than  the  grave-clothes,  less  than  the 
sepulcher.  It  is  to  Paul  an  impossible 
consequence.  He  cannot  think  of  Christ 
as  dead.  He  says,  'If  Christ  be  dead, 
death  must  be  a  delusion.'  Did  you  never 
feel  this  experience  ?  You  parted  with  a 
friend  an  hour  ago,  and  the  next  hour  you 
heard  that  he  was  dead ;  you  said,  '  Im- 
possible ! '  And  when  it  was  confirmed,  you 
said  again, '  Impossible  !  If  he  be  dead,  then 
death  is  not  to  die.  I  must  have  mis- 
named it,  misread  it,  mistaken  the  in- 
scription on  its  doorway.  Death  hence- 
forth is  a  gate  of  life  to  me.'"  ''Son  of 
Man,  whenever  I  doubt  of  life,  I  think  of 
Thee.  Nothing  is  so  impossible  as  that 
Thou  shouldst  be  dead.  I  can  imagine  the 
hills  to  dissolve  in  vapor,  and  the  stars  to 
melt  in  smoke,  and  the  rivers  to  empty 
themselves  in  sheer  exhaustion ;  but  I  feel 
no  limit  in  Thee.  Thou  never  growest  old 
to  me.  Last  century  is  old,  last  year  is 
old,  last  season  is  an  obsolete  fashion ;  but 
Thou  art  not  obsolete.     Thou  art  abreast 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  129 

of  all  the  centuries,  nay,  Thou  goest  before 
them  like  the  star.  I  have  never  come  up 
with  Thee,  modern  as  I  am.  Thy  picture 
is  at  home  in  every  land.  A  thousand  have 
fallen  at  its  side,  but  it  has  kept  its  bloom  ; 
old  Jerusalem,  old  Rome,  new  Rome  — 
it  has  been  young  amid  them  all.  There- 
fore, when  oppressed  by  the  sight  of  death, 
I  shall  turn  to  Thee.  I  shall  see  my  im- 
mortality in  Thee.  I  shall  read  the  possi- 
bilities of  my  soul  in  Thee.  I  shall  measure 
the  promise  of  my  manhood  by  Thee.  I 
shall  comfort  myself  by  the  impossible  con- 
clusion, '  If  there  be  no  immortality,  Christ 
is  dead.' ''  The  real  ground,  that  is,  of 
faith  in  immortality  is  Jesus  himself,  his 
character,  his  teaching,  his  death. 

It  is  written  of  one  of  those  fateful  crises 
in  the  life  of  Jesus,  when  was  fought  out, 
under  the  leadership  of  Peter,  one  of  the 
world's  ''decisive  battles,"  that,  in  the  sift- 
ing out  of  his  following,  Jesus  finally  turned 
to  the  Twelve  to  ask :  ' '  Will  ye  also  go 
away?"  And  the  fourth  gospel  makes 
Peter  answer  in  words  often  since  wrung 
from  human  lips  in  like  crisis  hours  :  ''Lord, 
to  whom  shall  we  go  ?     Thou  hast  the  words 


I30  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

of  eternal  life.  And  we  have  believed  and 
know  that  thou  art  the  Holy  One  of  God." 
And  this  answer  of  a  struggling  soul  in  a 
Capernaum  synagogue  in  the  far-away 
years  remains  still,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  the 
best  answer  that  the  human  heart,  reaching 
out  for  God  and  right  and  hope  in  answer 
to  the  challenging  questions  of  our  own  day, 
can  make:  "Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go? 
Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life.  And 
we  have  believed  and  know  that  thou  art 
the  Holy  One  of  God." 

The  situation  described  in  the  gospel 
was  not  an  easy  one  for  the  Twelve.  They, 
too,  understand  but  partially  what  Jesus 
means,  though  he  has  made  it  all  too  clear 
that  many  of  their  conceptions  of  Messiah- 
ship  are  doomed  to  disappointment.  But 
still  they  have  been  long  enough  with 
Jesus  to  know  that  there  is  no  one  else  to 
whom  they  may  better  go.  If  the  secret 
of  the  spiritual  life,  they  are  saying  through 
Peter,  if  the  true  life  with  God,  if  the  as- 
surance of  the  Father,  are  not  with  thee, 
surely  they  are  with  no  one.  If  there  is 
any  hope  at  all,  it  is  with  thee ;  to  go  back 
from  thee  and  to  give  up  our  faith  in  thee, 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  131 

is  to  give  up  all  faith  in  truth,  in  righteous- 
ness, in  God.  A  situation  very  like  this  is 
the  exact  situation  to-day.  Questions  and 
difficulties  and  doubts  we  may  have,  but  we 
cannot  have  less  of  them  away  from  Jesus. 
Such  light  as  we  have  gathers  right  here, 
about  him.  ''Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go  ? " 
And  we  too,  with  Peter,  pass  on,  through 
the  troubled,  half -bewildered  questioning 
and  struggle,  with  gathering  strength  and 
assurance,  to  the  positive  ground,  and 
say  with  him :  ' '  Thou  hast  the  words  of 
eternal  life."  We  have  found  new  life  with 
thee;  little  by  little,  as  we  have  stayed 
with  thee  and  heard  thy  words  and  felt  the 
touch  of  thy  spirit,  our  point  of  view,  our 
desires,  our  ambitions,  have  changed.  And 
now  that  you  force  the  question  upon  us, 
the  answer  is  ready,  and  we  can  see  that 
"all  the  springs  of  our  life  are  in  thee." 
We  cannot  give  thee  up.  We  live  in  thee  ; 
and  the  quality  of  this  new  life  we  have 
found  with  thee  verifies  itself  as  eternal. 
Thou  bringest  us  into  the  very  certainty 
and  sharing  of  the  life  of  the  eternal  God. 
Thou  canst  not'pass.  ' '  Thou  hast  the  words 
of  eternal  life." 


132  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

With  faith  tested,  thus,  by  experience  of 
Jesus  in  Hfe,  Peter  is  able  to  go  on  to  say : 
''We  have  beheved  and  know  that  thou 
art  the  Holy  One  of  God."  Whether  this 
was  a  Messianic  title  or  not,  he  can  hardly 
have  used  it  here  with  the  full  sense  of  it 
as  such.  He  is  simply  speaking  out  of  his 
heart  what  he  has  found  Jesus  to  be,  and 
naturally  drops  into  this  sacred  confession. 
In  this  hour  of  questioning  he  has  hardly 
gone  far  enough  yet  for  any  theological 
formulations ;  he  is  only  answering  the 
heart-searching  inquiry  of  his  Master,  and 
he  finds  that  he  can  say,  and  must  say  that 

—  as  never  before,  and  as  nowhere  else, 
as  no  prophet  has  been  imagined  by  him 

—  he  has  felt  in  Jesus  the  living  touch  of 
God.  Jesus  has  made  him  feel  his  sin  and 
God  at  the  same  time.  The  words  indicate, 
too,  the  source  of  his  feeling  —  ''the  Holy 
One  of  God. "  His  great  argument,  that  is, 
finally,  and  ours  too,  is  the  character  of 
Jesus.  With  the  prologue  of  this  fourth 
gospel,  we  still  may  say:  "We  beheld  his 
glory,  glory  as  of  the  only .  begotten  of  the 
Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth."  This 
is  the  great  miracle  of  the  history  of  the 


THE  SOURCES  OF  LIFE  133 

race,  and  if  this  is  true,  we  can  easily 
grant  or  spare  all  the  rest.  And  it  is  true 
—  the  one  great  fact  of  this  history  of  our 
earth.     ''The  Light  is  come." 

Thus,  even  in  our  hours  of  crisis,  Jesus 
answers  our  insistent  questions  :  What  can 
I  know  ?  What  ought  I  to  do  ?  For  what 
may  I  hope  ?  And,  face  to  face  with  him, 
we  may  say  with  Peter:  "If  the  solution 
is  not  in  him,  there  is  no  solution.  He  meets 
the  test  of  life.  And  the  great  ground  of 
our  confidence  is  his  character  and  the  inner 
appeal  of  God  in  him."  So  surely  has 
Jesus  abiding  significance  for  the  entire 
spiritual  life  of  men.  He  is  still  the  great 
source  of  life. 


V 

THE  ENEMIES  OF  LIFE 

Opposing  Personalities 

Our  previous  discussion  has  already  in- 
dicated that  life  finds  most  dangerous 
enemies  in  the  peril  of  the  lower  attain- 
ment, and  in  the  lack  of  honesty  and  fellow- 
ship with  the  best ;  and  so  in  refusing  to 
face  the  outstanding  facts  of  life  with  an 
honest  reaction  upon  them,  and  in  turning 
away  from  the  supreme  sources  of  life. 
Here,  however,  we  are  thinking  not  of  these 
impersonal  perils,  but  of  the  dangers  lurk- 
ing in  those  essential  personal  relations 
from  which  we  cannot  turn  aside.  The 
spiritual  life  is  so  entirely  a  life  ultimately 
of  personal  relations,  that  we  cannot  ignore 
the  dangers  that  lie  here.  In  simple  hon- 
esty, too,  we  have  no  right  to  be  oblivious 
to  this  darker  side  of  life.  The  considera- 
tion of  the  perils  in  our  personal  relations 
peculiarly  concerns,  also,  those  whose  calling 

134 


THE   ENEMIES   OF   LIFE  135 

is  largely  personal  in  its  nature.  More- 
over, few  lessons  are  so  valuable  to  any  of 
us  as  those  that  may  be  learned  from 
studying  our  own  lives  side  by  side  with 
the  lives  of  far  greater  souls.  There  is  a 
great  wealth  of  suggestion  for  the  man  who 
is  willing  to  put  his  life,  thus,  alongside 
of  that  of  the  great  Master  of  life,  to  learn 
the  lesson  of  its  parallel  experiences.    ■ 

It  is  Matthew  who  has  made  most  plain 
for  us  in  the  central  section  of  his  Gospel 
(Matt.  11-14)  the  personal  elements  of 
opposition  in  the  life  and  work  of  Jesus. 
He  sees  Jesus  confronting  the  doubt  of 
John,  the' shallow  and  unappreciative  re- 
sponse of  the  Galileans,  the  prejudiced  and 
malicious  opposition  of  the  Pharisees,  the 
attempted  spiritual  dictation  of  his  kindred, 
the  contempt  of  familiarity  of  his  fellow 
townsmen,  the  opposition  of  Herod,  the 
constant  breaking  in  on  his  sought  retire- 
ment with  his  disciples,  the  slowness  and 
dullness  of  this  inner  circle,  and  even  their 
disloyalty.  How  much  of  all  this  concerns 
us  ?  The  thoughtful  observer  of  his  own  life 
is  certain  to  find,  it  may  be  suspected,  experi- 
ences running  quite  parallel  to  these  of  Jesus. 


136  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

First  of  all,  in  loyalty  to  truth  and  to  his 
own  growth,  and  in  the  inevitable  difference 
of  ideals,  every  earnest  growing  man,  and 
especially  every  leader  and  teacher,  must 
expect  what  Jesus  found  in  his  relation  to 
John  —  growing  distrust  of  previous  warm 
friends.  These  friends  may  be,  like  John 
the  Baptist,  those  who  believed  in  you 
first  and  most,  and  those  who  perhaps 
started  you  toward  your  present  ideals,  or 
encouraged  you  in  them.  Or  they  may  be 
those  who  began  with  you  and  have  not 
gone  on,  or  have  gone  another  way,  and,  in 
any  case  have  lost  touch  with  your  point  of 
view  and  with  your  way  of  approach  to 
things  spiritual  and  divine.  They  are  those 
who  miss,  perchance,  the  old  phrases,  or 
who  had  mapped  out  your  course  for  you 
and  you  have  not  followed  it,  but  have 
grown  away  from  them.  It  is  not  easy  to 
face,  as  a  practically  certain  element  in 
one's  life-work,  this  growing  distrust  of 
previous  warm  friends.  But  one  can  hardly 
expect  to  be  spared  it. 

How,  now,  is  one  to  meet,  with  calm 
and  courage  of  spirit,  this  growing  distrust 
of  friends  whom  he  has  loved  and  whose 


THE   ENEMIES   OF   LIFE  137 

faith  he  would  gladly  sacrifice  much  to 
keep  ?  Because  he  cannot  be  as  sure  as 
Jesus  was  with  reference  to  his  own  position, 
he  may  well,  in  the  first  place,  make  this 
growing  distrust  of  old  friends  an  occasion 
for  carefully  reviewing  the  grounds  of  his 
own  position  again,  for  making  sure  that 
he  has  not,  in  heedlessness  or  haste  or  prej- 
udice, drifted  or  rushed  into  positions 
which  he  cannot  justify.  He  may  not  as- 
sume without  question  that  he  is  certainly 
right  and  that  these  who  distrust  him  are 
certainly  wrong.  But  when,  in  modesty, 
he  has  made  such  a  resurvey  of  his  posi- 
tion, he  is  sure,  in  a  number  of  cases,  still 
to  find  that  he  cannot  hope,  in  loyalty  to 
the  truth,  and  in  obedience  to  his  own  con- 
science, to  take  a  position  which  can  satisfy 
these  old  friends.  He  will  find  it  possible 
only  carefully  to  follow  Jesus'  own  method 
in  meeting  the  doubt  of  John :  He  will 
warmly  sympathize  with  their  difficulty; 
he  may  gently  appeal  for  their  confidence ; 
he  will  generously  praise,  recognizing  their 
true  worth ;  and  he  will  send  the  tender 
message  back  with  the  evidence  of  the  life 
and  power  of  his  work  in  fruits,  as  Jesus 


138  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

said  to  the  messengers  who  came  to  him 
from  John:  ''Go  your  way  and  tell  John 
the  things  which  ye  do  hear  and  see." 

To  bring  pain  and  disappointment  to 
warm  friends,  to  gain  only  growing  dis- 
trust —  sometimes  from  fathers  and 
mothers,  sometimes  from  earlier  teachers 
and  one's  childhood  companions  —  is  a 
sad  and  bitter  experience,  but  it  is  a  practi- 
cally certain  part  of  the  experience  of  every 
earnestly  growing  soul. 

The  faithful  teacher  or  leader  in  any  high 
sphere  may  expect,  also,  to  share  with 
Jesus  the  experience  of  the  shallow  and  in- 
appreciative  response  of  an  enthusiastic 
following.  It  is  particularly  hard  to  be 
conscious  of  failure,  where  one  seems  most 
to  succeed ;  to  find  the  hour  of  one's  ap- 
parent triumph  in  truth  the  hour  of  bitter 
defeat.  But  this  was  the  experience  of 
Jesus  himself.  It  may  be  confidently  ex- 
pected, in  his  measure,  by  every  real  leader 
in  high  things. 

For  the  worst  enemies  of  a  great  and 
deep  cause  are  its  shallow  friends ;  the 
friends  who,  because  of  their  very  shallow- 
ness,   do    not    understand    it,    constantly 


THE  ENEMIES  OF  LIFE  139 

misrepresent  it,  and  therefore  always  hinder 
it.  They  have  no  abiding  care  for  the 
deeper  riches.  They  offer  only  the  shallow 
ground  or  the  choking  thorns,  putting 
small  comparative  estimate  on  the  great 
cause  to  whose  support  they  are  pledged. 
They  are  those  who,  overriding  Jesus'  own 
conception  of  himself,  would  "come  and 
take  him  by  force  and  make  him  king." 
They  see  in  him  only  a  bread-king,  not  lord 
of  all  life,  and  the  supreme  revelation  of 
God.  They  have  no  power  to  weigh  spirit- 
ual worth  ;  they  can  measure  only  economic 
values,  can  count  only  loaves  and  fishes. 
They  heaf,  therefore,  no  deep  message, 
whether  from  John  or  Jesus.  They  are 
fickle,  vacillating  children  in  the  market- 
place, not  willing  to  play  either  wedding 
or  funeral  —  unable  to  respond  greatly 
to  the  appeal  of  either  joy  or  sorrow.  They 
can  face,  on  the  contrary,  the  greatest 
divine  manifestations  and  be  unaroused  in 
the  depths  of  their  nature,  untouched  by 
what  would  move  the  hardest.  The  moral 
and  spiritual  leader  becomes  to  such  what 
Ezekiel  became  to  many  who  heard  him : 
"Lo,  thou  art  unto  them  as  a  very  lovely 


I40  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

song,  of  one  that  hath  a  pleasant  voice 
and  can  play  well  upon  an  instrument,  for 
they  hear  thy  words,  but  they  do  them  not." 
These  shallow  hearers  who  hear  at  first 
with  prompt  enthusiasm  are  they  for 
whom  small  things  are  enough ;  who  feel 
no  great  thirst,  but  are  pettily  satisfied ; 
who  refuse  to  accept  the  best  one  has  to 
give. 

Now  this  shallow  and  unappreciative 
response  of  a  following  that  may  be  still 
really  enthusiastic,  may  be,  on  the  one 
hand,  a  grievous  disappointment,  or  it 
may  be,  on  the  other  hand,  even  greater 
peril.  If  the  leader  still  keeps  his  aim 
high,  if  he  knows  the  greatness  of  his  mes- 
sage and  of  the  kingdom  of  truth  in  whose 
service  he  is,  the  shallow  response  is  bitter 
disappointment  indeed,  but  it  does  not 
imperil  his  own  life.  But  if  he  accept  the 
shallow  construction  put  upon  his  message 
by  some  who  will  count  themselves  his 
most  enthusiastic  friends,  but  who,  never- 
theless, minister  not  to  his  best,  nor  call 
that  best  out ;  if  he  accept  as  satisfactory 
the  support  of  those  who  are  willing,  rather, 
to  serve  his  selfish  ambitions  and  make  him 


THE  ENEMIES  OF  LIFE  141 

in  his  turn  bread-king,  or  would  like  him 
to  be  their  hired  man  in  the  ideal  realms, 
like  Micah's  priest,  and  pay  him  well  on 
the  lower  side,  but  who  yet  would  wrest 
him  from  his  noblest  purposes  to  their 
lower  ones,  even  "by  force" — here  is 
deadly  peril.  The  larger  service  of  many  a 
life  has  been  wrecked  by  this  shallow  re- 
sponse, taken  as  sufficient  and  satisfactory 
or  even  to  be  gloried  in ;  because  that 
meant  that  the  man  himself  was  lowered, 
his  vision  lost,  his  message  made  as  shallow 
as  the  response.  As  the  member  of  any 
high  calling  values  his  life  and  that  calling, 
he  may  c6unt  no  such  shallow  enthusiastic 
following  as  success,  for  it  is  in  truth  deep 
failure.  He  can  only  face  its  bitter  dis- 
appointment as  Jesus  faced  his  —  send  the 
multitude  away,  retreat  to  the  mountain  to 
pray,  bring  succor  to  the  faithful  few  in 
danger  of  being  dazzled  by  this  surface 
enthusiasm,  and  go  back  to  Capernaum  to 
sift  out  his  following. 

And  he  will  try  definitely  to  meet  this 
shallow  response  as  Jesus  met  the  similar 
response  of  the  Galileans,  by  showing  its 
unreasonableness,   by  reproof  of  its  blind 


142  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

folly,  by  appeal  and  tender  recurring  invita- 
tion, while  throughout  refusing,  nevertheless, 
to  lower  his  message  or  his  mission  to  the 
low  demand  of  this  shallow  and  inapprecia- 
tive,  though  it  be  enthusiastic,  response. 
But  he  may  not  hope  either  wholly  to  pre- 
vent or  wholly  to  evade  such  an  answer  to 
K  his  work. 

Neither  is  it  possible  for  one  to  escape, 
in  any  faithful  ministry  of  the  truth,  the 
bitter,  prejudiced,  malicious  opposition  of 
self-satisfied  and  self-ordained  conservators 
of  the  truth  and  savers  of  the  ark.  Here, 
too,  one  must  walk  in  the  way  of  the  Master 
of  life.  The  teacher  and  every  servant  of 
the  truth  must  have  a  passion  for  reaHty, 
an  earnestness  in  pursuit  of  the  truth,  that 
brooks  no  arbitrary  limits.  He  is  sure, 
therefore,  to  have  to  face  the  opposition 
of  those  who  profess  to  judge  from  high 
standards,  but  yet  are  sticklers  for  hoary 
rules,  repeaters  and  testers  of  phrases, 
worshipers  of  customs,  and  echoers  of 
creeds  never  really  their  own,  rather  than 
contenders  for  judgment  and  mercy.  They 
are  so  prejudiced  that  they  may  ascribe, 
as  in  the  case  of  Jesus,  the  divinest  works 


THE  ENEMIES  OF  LIFE  143 

to  evil,  thus  perverting  all  moral  and  spirit- 
ual discernment.  They  are  therefore  able 
to  understand  only  certain  magical  signs, 
not  the  true  spiritual  and  moral  appeal. 
They  are  empty  souls,  destitute  of  all  real 
moral  and  religious  appreciation  and  en- 
thusiasm, and  with  no  sense  of  the  great- 
ness of  the  spiritual  call.  It  is  still  quite 
possible  that  the  worst  enemies  of  the  truth 
and  of  real  spirituality  may  be  among  the 
most  zealous  religionists,  and  those  that 
count  themselves  most  concerned  for  the 
truth. 

Even  a  humble  and  patient  and  tolerant 
and  loving  ministry  to  the  lives  of  others, 
that  is  nevertheless  faithful,  cannot  hope 
wholly  to  escape  such  bitter  and  malicious 
opposition.  And  one  needs  all  the  power- 
ftil  influence  of  the  example  of  Jesus  to  be 
able  to  meet  such  opposition  rightly.  Re- 
membering one's  own  need  and  short- 
sightedness and  temptability,  one  will  wish 
first  of  all  to  make  sure  that  he  has  not 
deserved  any  part  of  this  opposition,  to  see 
to  it  that  if  at  any  point  he  has  failed  herein, 
he  does  not  further  provoke  needless  an- 
tagonism.    But   with   this   point   guarded, 


144  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

one  will  have  to  meet  the  inevitable  opposi- 
tion which  still  remains,  with  Christ's  own 
profound  sense  of  the  emptiness  of  soul 
involved,  and  with  the  deep  pity  which 
such  a  state  provokes  as  can  nothing  else. 
For  none  are  so  hopeless  as  those  who  do 
not  care,  who  have  lost  all  power  to  dis- 
criminate in  values. 

And  then,  for  oneself,  turning  from  the 
thought  of  the  opposition  which  cannot  be 
wholly  stayed,  it  will  be  possible  only  to 
gird  one's  soul  again  for  this  steady  going 
forward  with  one's  work  and  one's  testi- 
mony to  the  truth,  as  Jesus  did,  while 
provoking  no  needless  controversy.  Truth 
can  only  so  make  progress.  How  many 
times  in  the  years  of  every  faithful  life, 
night  after  night  and  morning  after  morn- 
ing, will  the  soul  have  to  come  back  to  this 
one  thought :  The  only  thing  I  can  do  is 
simply  to  go  on  doing  as  nearly  right  as  I 
know  how ;  for  I  must  not,  in  any  case, 
allow  myself  to  be  provoked  into  an  atti- 
tude akin  to  that  which  opposes  me. 
"  Consider  him  that  hath  endured  such  gain- 
saying of  sinners  against  himself,  that  ye 
wax  not  weary,   fainting  in  your  souls." 


THE   ENEMIES   OF   LIFE  145 

"It  is  enough  for  the  disciple  that  he  be  as 
his  Master." 

Beyond  the  distrust  of  previous  warm 
friends,  beyond  the  shallow  response  of  en- 
thusiastic followers,  beyond  the  prejudiced 
opposition  of  the  self-satisfied,  every  highly 
determined  soul  may  expect,  with  Jesus, 
attempted  spiritual  dictation  on  the  part  of 
those  near  and  dear.  In  the  thick  of  your 
battle,  pressed  on  every  side,  because  of  the 
very  strenuousness  of  your  fight,  these, 
with  natural  concern  and  perhaps  with 
some  wounded  pride, — saying  he  is  "be- 
side himself,"  —  still  "stand  without,"  hold 
aloof,  and'  yet  wish  to  dictate  your  course. 
If  they  come  in  love,  it  is  still  largely  mis- 
taken love,  caring  more  for  your  comfort 
than  for  your  growth  and  for  your  work. 

In  this  attempted  dictation  on  the  part 
of  those  one  loves  may  lie  a  dire  and  deadly 
temptation,  all  the  more  so  because  of  its 
source.  It  was  not  for  nothing  that  Jesus 
said,  "And  a  man's  foes  shall  be  they  of 
his  own  household."  There  is  a  point 
beyond  which  you  may  not  allow  even  love 
itself  to  tempt  you.  Love  makes  it  hard 
to  refuse  to  Hsten.     And  yet  you  had  not 


146  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

loved  them  half  so  much,  loved  you  not 
honor  more.  One  must  therefore  straightly, 
though  tenderly  and  reverently,  face  this 
opposition  and  this  peril.  We  must  make 
it  forever  clear  to  ourselves  that  no  other 
may  dictate  in  our  inner  life,  in  the  ultimate 
decision  of  our  duty.  No  other  may  decide 
for  us,  no  other  may  force  our  decision ; 
and  they  are  not  true  friends  who  would  do 
it.  They  make,  rather,  the  mistake  of  the 
companions  of  Socrates,  who  would  deliver 
him  from  prison  to  bind  him  over  to  con- 
tinuous self -contempt. 

"He  that  loveth  father  or  mother  more 
than  me  is  not  worthy  of  me."  ''And 
there  is  meaning  in  Christ's  words,"  as 
Ruskin  says.  ''Whatever  misuse  may  have 
been  made  of  them,  whatever  false  proph- 
ets—  and  heaven  knows  there  have  been 
many  —  have  called  the  young  children  to 
them,  not  to  bless,  but  to  curse,  the  assured 
fact  remains,  that  if  you  will  obey  God, 
there  will  come  a  moment  when  the  voice 
of  man  will  be  raised,  with  all  its  holiest 
natural  authority,  against  you.  The  friend 
and  the  wise  adviser  —  the  brother  and 
the  sister  —  the  father  and  the  master  — 


THE  ENEMIES  OF  LIFE  147 

the  entire  voice  of  your  prudent  and  keen- 
sighted  acquaintance  —  the  entire  weight  of 
the  scornful  stupidity  of  the  vulgar  world 
—  for  once,  they  will  be  against  you,  all 
at  one.  You  have  to  obey  God  rather  than 
man.  The  human  race,  with  all  its  wisdom 
and  love,  all  its  indignation  and  folly,  on 
one  side,  —  God  alone  on  the  other.  You 
have  to  choose." 

Every  leader  in  the  pursuit  of  the  truth 
and  in  spiritual  endeavor  is  sure  to  find  one 
of  the  most  common  and  certain  elements 
of  opposition,  as  Jesus  found  it,  in  the 
further  fact  that  ''the  prophet  is  not  with- 
out honors  save  in  his  own  country  and  in 
his  own  house."  The  unreadiness  to  recog- 
nize the  message  of  the  known  man  may  be 
assumed,  as  well  as  the  very  common  failure 
to  support  the  prophet  as  prophet  and  for 
what  he  really  is  until  after  his  death.  The 
building  of  the  tombs  of  the  prophets,  rather 
than  following  their  living  voice,  was  not 
confined  to  Christ's  day.  All  real  leaders 
may  expect,  therefore,  something  of  that 
contempt  that  belongs  to  familiarity  from 
those  for  whom  the  familiar,  just  because 
it  is  familiar,  seems  of  small  account ;   and 


148  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

who,  for  this  very  reason,  are  the  more  ready 
to  run  over  to  the  strange  voice  and  the 
novel  message.  There  will  always  be  many 
in  any  community  who  find  it  difficult  to 
recognize  greatness  or  worth  in  itself. 
They  are  able  to  see  it  only  when  it  has  been 
properly  indorsed  by  others  from  outside. 
They  repeat  again  the  old  questions  of  the 
contempt  of  familiarity:  "Is  not  this  the 
carpenter's  son  ?  is  not  his  mother  called 
Mary,  and  his  brethren,  James,  and  Joseph, 
and  Simon,  and  Judas  ?  And  his  sisters, 
are  they  not  all  with  us  ?  Whence  then 
hath  this  man  all  these  things  ?" 

While  this  obstacle  is  by  no  means  the 
most  serious  that  a  man  must  meet  in  his 
life-work,  it  is  still  a  real  hindrance,  often 
leading  to  a  quite  unjust  overestimation  of 
the  outside  strange  voice  or  message,  that 
may  be  hard  to  bear  because  one  cannot  help 
feeling  the  essential  injustice  of  the  judg- 
ment. And  this  very  fact  may  lead  one  to 
yield  to  the  temptation  either  to  strive 
after  the  merely  novel  and  strange,  or 
popular,  rather  than  the  true,  —  straining 
for  effect, — or  to  press  for  public  recognition 
outside,  in  the  treatment  of  calls,  in  public 


THE  ENEMIES  OF  LIFE  149 

exploitation  of  one's  self  in  the  press  or  on 
the  platform,  and  so  to  force  recognition  at 
home.  In  either  case,  the  man  has  con- 
sented to  some  lowering  of  himself ;  and 
the  straining  for  effect  is  especially  likely 
to  give  a  false  note  to  one's  own  work  and 
message,  and  to  react  on  one's  mood  and 
feeling,  so  that  he  is  no  longer  a  true  man 
with  a  God-given  calling.  Every  true  man 
will  need  rather  to  stay  his  soul  with  Paul's 
conclusion,  ''It  is  a  very  small  thing  that 
I  should  be  approved  of  man's  judgment." 

When  a  man  asks  himself  how  he  is  to 
meet  in  a  high  and  unselfish  spirit,  and  with 
real  dignity  and  success,  this  element  of 
difficulty  in  his  life-work,  it  is  plain  that  he 
must  first  of  all,  in  simple  fairness,  recognize 
a  certain  justice  in  the  difficulty  he  con- 
fronts. He  must  plainly  admit  the  value 
of  different  points  of  view  and  of  the  fresh 
putting  of  things,  and  allow  himself  neither 
to  oppose  nor  to  be  jealous  of  any  gain  that 
may  so  come.  Least  of  all  is  he  to  yield 
to  the  involved  temptation  to  "stoop  to 
conquer."  He  is  to  keep  himself  high  and 
noble,  and  to  be  sure  that  the  appreciation 
of  the  seemingly  more  successful  work  or 


ISO  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

messages  of  others  drives  him  only  to  seek  a 
stronger,  deeper,  truer  work  and  message 
himself,  in  order  to  keep  true  to  his  own 
best  ideals.  For  the  unjust  judgment  which 
still  remains  after  all  possible  allowance, 
the  spiritual  leader  needs  to  remember  that, 
as  in  Christ's  case,  popular  response  is  no 
full  proof  of  truth  and  wisdom,  no  adequate 
measure  of  the  value  of  the  work  done. 
And  he  must  simply  keep  steadily  on  in  the 
faithful  proclamation  of  the  best  vision  that 
God  gives  him.  Nothing  else,  in  any  case, 
is  open  to  him. 

It  is  Herod,  in  the  conception  of  Matthew, 
who,  moved  by  Herodias  in  her  exposed 
wickedness,  puts  an  end  to  the  more  public 
ministry  of  Jesus  and  drives  him  into  com- 
parative retirement.  And  in  every  age 
there  is  always  a  strong  tendency  on  the 
part  of  the  regular  authorities,  the  powers 
that  be,  the  forces  of  society,  to  crush  the 
unwonted,  to  deprecate  anything  that  es- 
sentially changes  the  routine  of  the  cus- 
tomary, to  block  any  more  serious  changes. 
The  prophet's  voice,  on  the  contrary,  must 
often  be  a  disturbing  voice,  and  the  persis- 
tent call  of  our  own  generation  for  "the 


THE  ENEMIES   OF   LIFE  151 

sane,"  it  is  to  be  feared,  qtiite  often  means 
only,  "Leave  us  undisturbed,  don't  call  the 
conventional  in  question." 

Of  course  the  real  leader  in  any  ideal 
realm  must  expect  the  uncompromising 
opposition  of  those  whose  evil  is  challenged 
and  who  resent  the  high  standard  which 
condemns  them,  who  would  silence  the 
prophet's  voice  and  gladly  appeal  to  the 
authorities  against  "this  stirrer  up  of  the 
people,"  this  "disturber  of  the  peace." 
From  the  days  of  Socrates  and  of  Jesus,  it 
has  been  easy  to  make  the  established 
authorities  find  an  enemy  of  society  in  the 
prophetic  'messenger.  The  danger  of  the 
spiritual  leader  is  that  he  will  not  be  willing 
to  be  a  real  prophet  speaking  out  his  mes- 
sage ;  that  he  will  love  peace  more  than 
purity,  and  be  unwilling  to  say  the  de- 
manded word.  Some  of  the  best  men  I 
have  known  have  been  tempted  to  failure 
at  this  point.  It  is  the  peculiar  temptation 
of  the  public  man  to  keep  his  popularity 
and  his  reputation  for  sanity,  at  the  expense 
of  real  cowardice.  He  yields  to  the 
prophet's  temptation,  —  "Speak  unto  us 
smooth  things,  prophesy  deceits."     To  be 


152  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

a  prophet  is  no  holiday  task.  A  spiritual 
and  moral  leader  must  lead,  and  he  must 
often  subject  himself  to  severe  criticism 
on  that  account.  A  prophetic  ministry 
to  a  community  or  nation  must  fear  God 
rather  than  men.  And  the  more  such  pro- 
fessions as  preaching  and  teaching  and 
writing  become  regularly  organized  func- 
tions in  human  society,  the  greater  is  the 
danger  that  they  will  not  remain  untram- 
meled.  The  spiritual  leader  must  never 
for  an  instant  admit,  either  to  himself  or 
to  any  one  else,  that  he  is  the  hired  man 
of  either  few  or  many.  He  is  called  to  be  a 
preserver,  helper,  inspirer,  warner  for  men's 
moral  and  spiritual  life.  He  is  put  in  trust 
with  the  truth,  with  great  community  in- 
terests and  with  men's  souls,  and  as  he  is 
true  to  that  trust  he  must  speak  some 
things,  though  in  meekness  and  in  charity, 
that  men  do  not  want  to  hear.  The  danger 
at  this  point  in  any  life-work  is  very  great. 
How,  then,  may  a  man  meet,  in  Christ- 
like spirit,  this  opposition  of  the  customary 
and  of  unveiled  wickedness  ?  First  of  all, 
he  must  make  his  own  position  unmis- 
takably  clear,    though   with    charity   and 


THE   ENEMIES   OF   LIFE  153 

meekness,  and  courageously  stand  for  it. 
In  the  second  place,  he  is  neither  to  seek 
conflict  nor  to  provoke  it  needlessly.  He 
is  not  to  pursue  martyrdom,  nor  to  pose  as 
a  radical  reformer.  The  best  reformers 
the  world  has  ever  known  found  their 
work  forced  on  them  reluctantly.  The 
true  prophet  can  as  little  covet  martyrdom 
as  he  may  allow  himself  in  cowardice. 
And  when,  through  such  public  opposition, 
his  work  seems  hindered  and  narrowed,  he 
is  to  turn,  as  Jesus  turned,  only  the  more 
earnestly  and  fully  to  his  deeper,  though 
less  conspicuous,  work.  The  shutting  out 
of  the  mofe  public  opportunity  may  mean 
the  fruitful  shutting  in  to  more  significant 
work. 

But  even  when  you  have  turned  with 
full  heart  to  that  deepest  work  given  you 
with  a  few,  you  must  still  expect  the  diffi- 
culty of  the  constant  breaking  in  on  your 
sought  retirement  and  on  that  deepest  work. 
It  is  sure  to  come.  As  men  who  are  trying 
to  accomplish  some  significant  and  solid 
work,  the  ''devastator  of  the  day"  will  be 
always  with  you.  There  are  few  things 
that  earnest  men  need  more  to  make  clear 


154  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

to  themselves  from  the  beginning  of  their 
life-work,  than  that  they  will  have  to  fight 
for  time  to  grow,  for  time  to  do  solid  en- 
during work,  for  time  to  do  especially  the 
particular  definite  piece  of  work  which  God 
has  laid  on  their  souls  to  do.  High  achieve- 
ment is  possible  to  no  man  who  does  not 
carry  to  his  work  deep  reverence  for  it,  as 
given  him  of  God.  One  must  count  on  the 
constant  interruption  and  multitudinous 
unforeseen  extras  that  always  crowd  the 
life  of  the  busy  public  man.  One  will  be, 
thus,  in  constant  danger  of  frittering  away 
himself  and  his  work  and  his  deepest  service. 
It  is  most  important,  therefore,  that  one 
should  face  definitely  and  fully  this  further 
enemy  of  his  life  —  the  constant  breaking 
in  on  his  sought  retirement  and  his  deepest 
work.  Here,  too,  one  needs  the  inspiration 
and  the  counsel  of  Christ's  own  example. 
One  may  not  allow  himself  to  make  the 
monk's  mistake ;  you  cannot  withdraw 
from  life  if  you  would  minister  to  life.  You 
must  live  in  the  very  midst  of  it.  These 
interruptions,  it  is  true,  may  be  either 
temptations,  or  calls  of  God  ;  and  one  must 
learn  to  discriminate.     You  cannot  do  every- 


THE   ENEMIES   OF   LIFE  155 

thing,  and  you  will  find  yourselves  obliged 
to  cultivate  vigorously  Dr.  Trumbull's 
"duty  of  refusing  to  do  good."  One  may 
well  confront  himself,  in  the  face  of  mul- 
titudinous opportunities,  with  the  persis- 
tent question,  Have  I  just  here  a  real  mes- 
sage ?  Is  this  God's  opportunity  for  me 
just  now  ?  or  does  it,  rather,  mean  leaving 
more  imperative  and  immediate  obliga- 
tions ?  If  the  threatened  interruption  is 
for  you  truly  God's  opportunity,  then  you 
are  to  use  it  to  the  full,  gladly,  and  with 
abandon,  and  to  get  back  promptly  to 
your  regularly  given  work.  For  your  great- 
est work  must  always  lie  with  that  small 
inner  circle  whose  lives  you  may  touch  most 
closely.  But  even  the  few,  it  must  always 
be  remembered,  one  is  training  not  for  their 
own  sake  alone,  but  for  the  service  of  the 
larger  number  beyond  his  immediate  reach. 
Even  in  this  most  fruitful  work,  with  the 
few  nearest  to  him,  the  leader  cannot  escape 
another  persistent  obstacle.  In  the  work 
with  this  inner  circle  particularly  committed 
to  him,  he  will  be  compelled  to  feel  often 
their  slowness  and  dullness ;  for  they  are 
giving,  and  can  give,  much  less  time  and 


156  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

thought  to  the  themes  of  the  ideal  world 
than  he.  It  will  often  seem  to  him  as  if 
exceedingly  small  progress  were  being  made, 
and  he  will  chafe  under  the  constant  need  of 
adaptation,  of  accommodation  to  narrow- 
ness and  prejudice  and  false  education  and 
different  temperaments.  And  he  will  es- 
pecially feel,  in  what  will  prove  to  be  some 
of  the  darkest  hours  of  his  higher  life-work, 
the  painful  lack  of  full  sympathy  and  com- 
plete response  to  his  best,  even  on  the  part 
of  those  who  stand  closest.  He  will  know 
what  it  is  in  much  to  be  left  quite  alone, 
and  he  will  enter,  in  his  measure,  into  the 
experience  of  the  solitariness  of  the  Master 
of  life. 

One  will  be  able  to  meet  this  most  in- 
terior obstacle  of  his  life-work,  only  as  he 
definitely  aims  to  cultivate  patience  with 
what  must  often  seem  to  him  slowness  and 
dullness.  This  greatest  work  that  it  is 
possible  for  any  man  to  do  —  the  giving 
of  himself  fully  to  a  few  —  in  its  very 
nature  requires  much  time  and  continuous 
association.  But  as  surely  as  Christ's  great- 
est work  was  not  his  miracles,  nor  his  public 
preaching    and    teaching    tours,     but    his 


THE   ENEMIES   OF   LIFE  157 

close  personal  training  of  the  little  inner 
circle,  so  surely  must  any  man's  greatest 
work  lie  in  the  same  sphere.  This  most 
significant  opportunity  one  can  meet  only 
as  Christ  did,  with  time  and  close  associa- 
tion and  the  steady  putting  of  the  truth, 
while  he  keeps  firm  in  his  heart  the  spirit 
of  high  hope,  because  he  understands  that 
as  this  intimate  work  with  a  few  is  one's 
most  significant  and  fundamental  work, 
as  the  ends  here  sought  are  supremely  great, 
so  he  need  not  begrudge  the  greatest  pains. 
One  must  often  come  back  for  the  staying 
of  his  soul  to  the  fact  that  it  seems  quite 
probable  that  the  larger  part  of  even  the 
so-called  public  ministry  of  the  Master  of 
life  was  devoted  chiefly  to  the  training  of 
the  Twelve  ;  and  one  will  seek  to  come  into 
the  sharing  of  his  own  infinite  patience  and 
hope. 

There  is  yet  one  further  bitterness  which 
the  earnest  soul  may  not  be  spared.  It 
is  hardly  possible  that  any  true  leader  in  a 
large  work  should  be  wholly  without  the 
experience  of  disloyalty  on  the  part  of  some, 
even  in  the  inmost  circle.  There  will  be 
some  betrayals  on  the  part  of  those  who 


158  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

belong  only  nominally  to  the  inner  group, 
but  there  will  be  at  least  the  temporary 
denials  of  those  who  really  are  of  the  inmost 
circle.  That  within  this  bond  of  intimate 
fellowship  disloyalty  should  appear,  must 
always  give  the  sharpest  pain  of  all.  No 
considerations  can  make  that  experience 
easy  ;  none  can  make  it  other  than  an  abiding 
sorrow. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  open  to  every  learner 
of  the  Master  of  life  to  drink  even  this 
bitterest  draught,  in  the  spirit  that  Jesus 
showed,  —  to  face  the  certainty  of  coming 
defection  —  ''Ye  shall  be  scattered  every 
man  to  his  own  and  shall  leave  me  alone" 
—  with  the  quiet  firm  faith  in  God  that 
makes  it  possible  still  to  say,  ''And  yet 
I  am  not  alone  because  the  Father  is  with 
me.''  He  may  connect,  too,  with  this  faith 
in  God,  Christ's  own  conquering,  towering 
faith  in  man,  which  can  look  forward  even 
past  denial  and  desertion  to  the  assurance 
of  the  return,  and  urge,  in  confidence  in  that 
work  of  God  already  begun  in  these  men,  "I 
made  supplication  for  thee,  that  thy  faith 
fail  not ;  and  do  thou,  when  once  thou  hast 
turned  again,  stablish  thy  brethren." 


THE   ENEMIES   OF   LIFE  159 

To  attempt  any  really  spiritual  service 
of  men  —  and  none  of  us  can  be  satisfied 
to  do  nothing  here  —  is  no  lackadaisical 
calling.  It  demands,  rather,  the  most  virile 
and  heroic  qualities,  coupled  with  the  deep- 
est and  most  spiritual  insight.  It  invites 
one,  as  we  have  seen,  to  face  misunder- 
standing, shallowness,  pride  and  prejudice 
and  malice,  spiritual  dictation,  the  con- 
tempt of  familiarity,  the  opposition  of  the 
customary  and  of  unveiled  wickedness,  the 
thwarting  of  one's  quiet  hours,  slowness 
and  dullness  and  even  disloyalty  in  the 
inner  circle.  And  one  may  find  them  all 
within  the  bounds  of  a  very  small  com- 
munity. All  classes  are  represented  in  these 
enemies  of  one's  life,  all  degrees  of  intimacy 

—  previous  warm  friends,  enthusiastic  fol- 
lowers, open  bitter  enemies,  intimates  and 
kindred,  authorities,  common  acquaintances, 
true  followers,  casual  claimants  on  timic 
and  thought.  All  kinds  of  temptations, 
too, — plain  and  hidden,  subtle  and  direct, 

—  here  confront  one  :  the  appeal  of  previous 
warm  trust  to  his  loyalty  and  his  desire 
not  to  pain  ;  the  appeal  of  shallow  followers 
to  his  love  of  success  and  his  desire  not  to 


i6o  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

disappoint ;  the  appeal  of  bitter  opponents 
to  his  love  of  fight  and  his  possibility  of 
prejudice  and  of  hate ;  the  appeal  of  kin- 
ship and  love  to  the  tenderness  of  his 
affection  and  to  his  love  of  ease  ;  the  appeal 
of  one's  familiars  to  his  desire  for  popularity 
and  to  his  spirit  of  envy ;  the  appeal  of 
institutional  opposition  to  fear  and  to  ob- 
stinacy ;  the  temptation,  in  the  casual 
meeting,  to  thoughtless  and  careless  neglect 
of  opportunity;  and  with  one's  intimates 
the  temptation  to  impatience  and  short- 
sightedness, sometimes  even  to  bitterness 
and  resentment,  to  discouragement  and  to 
doubt  of  the  love  of  God  and  of  the  possi- 
bilities of  men.  The  appeal  is  made,  thus, 
to  motives  the  lowest  and  almost  the 
highest ;  for  the  very  heights  which  one  is 
called  to  walk  in  his  highest  service  them- 
selves prompt  to  giddiness. 

All  these  enemies  of  life,  too,  are  not  only 
difficulties,  but,  as  we  have  seen,  personal 
perils  as  well.  Can  one  maintain,  in  the 
face  of  them,  his  faith  and  hope  and  love  ? 
With  large  tolerance  and  with  tender  sym- 
pathy, can  one  still  keep  his  convictions 
firm,  his  own  ideals  high  ?     The  prophetic 


THE   ENEMIES   OF   LIFE  i6i 

life,  dedicated  to  the  highest  service  of  men, 
just  because  it  is  of  the  prophetic  spirit, 
must  face  all  this.  On  the  way  to  life  one 
must  face  the  enemies  of  life. 


VI 

THE   ESSENCE  OF  LIFE 

Life  in  the  Will  of  God 

We  have  found  the  ruHng  method  of  Hfe 
to  be  honest  response  to  the  highest  reaHties 
and  personaHties  of  Hfe,  regarded  as  the 
completest  manifestations  we  have  of  the 
Source  of  all  life.  In  pressing  our  way  to 
the  most  significant  of  these  personalities, 
we  have  found  ourselves  again  and  again 
impelled  to  give  the  supreme  place  to  the 
personality  of  Jesus.  It  cannot  seem  to  us, 
therefore,  of  small  moment,  what  he  thought 
of  our  relation  to  the  will  of  God.  For  it 
seems  plain  that  that  ultimate  harmony  of 
life  to  which  religion  looks  cannot  come  to  a 
man  while  he  feels  himself  still  at  war  with 
the  universe,  constantly  baffled  by  the 
eternal  purposes  that  he  sees  at  work  in 
the  world.  The  deepest  condition,  then, 
of  fundamental  peace  must  be,  in  the 
language  of  religion,  the  union  of  our  will 

162 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  LIFE  163 

with  the  will  of  God.  At  the  center  of 
that  most  universal  of  the  vital  religious 
documents  of  the  race  —  the  Lord's  Prayer 
—  Jesus  places,  thus,  most  naturally  the 
petition,  ''Thy  will  be  done."  It  is  the 
very  heart  of  religion,  the  heart  of  ethics, 
the  center  of  humanity's  highest  aspiration. 
We  have  a  right  to  expect  that  its  thought 
will  range  wide. 

Yet  it  may  not  be  forgotten  that  the 
prayer,  ''Thy  will  be  done,"  has  seemed  to 
many  to  be  the  end  of  hope  rather  than  the 
assurance  of  hope.  Strange  as  it  sounds, 
it  seems  almost  true  for  most  that  this 
prayer  is  -said  with  a  gasp,  and  connotes 
only  bitter  trial,  deep  sorrow,  despairing 
outlook.  Our  hymn  books  quite  univer- 
sally put  all  hymns  gathering  about  this 
great  theme  of  the  will  of  God  under  such 
headings  as  submission,  resignation,  dis- 
cipline, and  trial.  The  old  test  of  con- 
version —  that  paradoxical  ' '  willingness 
to  be  damned  for  the  glory  of  God ' '  —  was 
a  legitimate  climax  of  this  view  of  the  will 
of  God.  Indeed,  there  is  a  singular  lack  of 
hymns  or  of  other  writing  that  connect 
the  note  of  hope  and  triumph  with  the 


i64  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

thought  of  the  will  of  God.  Are  these 
things,  now,  an  accurate  reflection  of  the 
thought  of  Jesus?  Are  they  signs  of  a 
genuinely  Christian  spirit  ?  or  do  they  come 
far  short  of  such  a  spirit  ?  Can  we  reverse 
the  seemingly  dominant  conception  at  this 
point,  and  change  the  atmosphere  of  this 
petition  from  one  of  gloomy,  corroding 
foreboding  to  one  of  confident  hope  ? 

In  the  fulfillment  of  this  purpose  we  may 
well  consider  three  things :  What  this 
prayer  meant  to  Jesus ;  how  it  confronts 
and  transcends  all  the  inadequate  concep- 
tions of  religion  that  have  marked  the  prog- 
ress of  the  centuries ;  and  the  necessity 
that  modern  Christianity,  in  line  with  the 
thought  of  Jesus,  should  enlarge  and  deepen 
its  conception  of  the  will  of  God  to  meet 
the  need  of  the  modern  world. 

Remembering  that  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
is  never  to  be  separated  from  himself,  a 
threefold  assumption  plainly  underlies  this 
petition,  and  each  assumption  is  a  great 
ground  of  hope :  first,  that  there  is  a 
heavenly  Father,  of  character  like  Christ's 
own ;  second,  that  there  is  a  heavenly  life, 
in  which   God's  will  is  already  perfectly 


THE   ESSENCE   OF   LIFE  165 

done ;  third,  that  God's  will  is  pledged  to 
a  like  heavenl}^  life  here  on  earth.  Out  of 
these  assumptions  is  born  the  prayer  "Our 
Father,  thy  will  be  done,  as  in  heaven,  so 
on  earth."  God's  will,  that  is,  backs  up 
with  its  infinite  resources  every  such  peti- 
tion, and  every  corresponding  endeavor. 

First  of  all,  then,  for  Jesus  there  is  at 
the  heart  of  the  world  a  personal  will  — 
for  even  our  later  philosophy  can  hardly 
carry  through  an  impersonal,  or  subper- 
sonal,  conception  ^  —  and  that  personal  will 
is  the  will  of  a  Father,  with  a  character 
like  that  of  Jesus.  God  is  like  Jesus ; 
that  is  the  very  essence  of  the  Gospel,  the 
source  of  all  hope  for  every  worthy  aim  and 
desire  in  the  heart  of  man. 

Secondly,  this  will  of  the  Father  has  an 
eternal  outlook  upon  another  life,  for  which 
this  life  is  but  a  training  school.  There  is 
a  sphere  where  God's  will  is  already  per- 
fectly done,  into  which  this  life  emerges. 
There  is  the  immortal  hope.  This  so-called 
eschatological  element  in  the  teaching  of 
Jesus   is    unmistakable.     It    is    not    to    be 

^Cf.  the  author's  The  Seeming  Unreality  of  the  Spiritual 
Life,  pp.  74-78. 


i66  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

blinked  at  nor  apologized  for.  The  view  of 
Jesus  would  be  quite  too  small,  if  it  failed 
to  take  in  another  life  and  the  activity  of 
God.  This  faith  is  needed,  deeply  needed, 
if  the  hearts  of  men  are  to  be  satisfied. 
If  death  ends  all,  it  is  mockery  to  talk  of  a 
satisfying  hope  ;  for  no  jugglery  with  pretty 
words  and  phrases  can  fill  empty  hearts 
or  make  good  extinguished  lives.  If  we 
must  give  up  the  hope  of  personal  im- 
mortality, let  us  do  it,  at  least,  with  self- 
respecting  honesty,  and  not  befool  ourselves 
or  others  with  substitutes  that  are  not  substi- 
tutes at  all.  I  confess  I  much  prefer  on  this 
point  the  blunt  honesty  of  John  Stuart  Mill  to 
the  ingenious  befogging  of  some  modern  al- 
truists. That  some  men  seem  to  themselves 
to  have  discovered  that  they  have  no  need 
or  desire  for  the  immortal  life  may  be  true  ; 
but  it  is  not  a  thing  to  be  said  boastfully, 
and  it  is  small  proof  for  those  of  us  who 
have  both  desire  and  need.  For  us  it 
must  seem  that  such  men  have  not 
awakened  to  full  self -consciousness,  or  at 
least  not  to  the  logical  thought  of  what 
such  self-consciousness  means.  One  won- 
ders if  they  have  ever  had  aims  not  to  be 


THE   ESSENCE   OF   LIFE  167 

snugly  packed  within  a  few  years,  or  if 
they  are  aware  of  what  even  one  friendship 
may  involve. 

Jesus,  at  least,  is  in  no  uncertainty  here. 
He  does  not  so  much  assert,  or  assure,  as 
assume.  The  atmosphere  of  his  whole  life 
is  that  of  the  eternal.  He  walks  in  the 
midst  of  it ;  his  thought,  his  spirit,  are  no- 
where else  fully  at  home.  And,  therefore, 
he  delivered  ''all  them  who  through  fear 
of  death  were  all  their  lifetime  subject  to 
bondage." 

But,  in  the  third  place,  Jesus  is  not 
thinking  in  this  petition  merely,  nor  mainly, 
of  anothef  life.  The  language  is  directed 
unmistakably  to  earth  and  to  this  life. 
''Thy  will  be  done,  as  in  heaven,  so  on 
earth."  The  attempt  on  the  part  of  some 
modem  scholars  to  make  the  aim  of  Jesus 
merely  eschatological  and  miraculous  is 
wrecked  on  this  petition  alone,  as  well  as 
on  the  whole  sweep  of  his  ethical  teaching. 
Unless  this  petition  and  this  ethical  teach- 
ing are  quite  to  be  emptied  of  meaning,  or 
an  absolute  break  is  to  be  made  between 
the  different  parts  of  his  teaching,  Jesus 
is  steadily  thinking  of  an  increasing  reign  of 


1 68  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

God  on  earth.  Indeed,  the  reign  of  God, 
in  its  very  nature,  must  look  to  all  men 
wherever  they  are,  and  to  all  that  concerns 
them.  This  prayer,  therefore,  looks  in 
the  mind  of  Jesus  to  the  great  goal,  the  one 
ambition  of  his  life,  —  the  reign  of  God  in 
the  individual  and  social  life  of  all  God's 
children  in  heaven  and  on  earth  —  the 
bringing  of  heaven  to  earth,  and  the  train- 
ing on  earth  for  the  great  goals  of  the 
heavenly  life.  Other  men  set  as  their  goal 
some  one  good,  some  single  aspect  of  this 
will ;  Christ's  goal  is  universal,  all-embrac- 
ing :  ''Thy  will  be  done,  as  in  heaven,  so 
on  earth."  In  the  coolness  and  calmness  of 
careful  deliberation,  this  Galilean  peasant 
—  just  as  other  men  decide  to  be  farmers, 
or  lawyers,  or  physicians  —  takes  on  as 
his  earthly  calling,  as  his  reasonable  life 
ambition,  the  full  reign  of  God  on  earth. 
For  simple  audacity  and  vitality  of  will, 
the  world  knows  nothing  comparable  with 
that  ambition.  Into  the  splendor  of  that 
audacity  and  vitality  of  will  all  who  would 
name  themselves  after  Christ  are  asked  to 
come.  For  to  this  purpose  he  soberly 
commits  his  disciples,   every  one,   in  this 


THE   ESSENCE   OF   LIFE  169 

central  petition  of  the  prayer  that  was 
always  to  characterize  them — "Thy  will 
be  done." 

It  is,  then,  no  cringing  cry;  it  is  no 
slave's  submission  to  superior  strength ; 
it  is  no  plaintive  wail ;  it  is  no  outcry  of  an 
enfeebled,  broken  will,  as  we  may  be  some- 
times tempted  to  think.  Rather  is  it  the 
highest  reach  of  a  will  superbly  disciplined 
to  a  world's  task,  enlightened  by  a  reason 
that  can  think  the  thoughts  of  God,  in- 
spired by  an  imagination  that  sees  the 
ultimate  consummation,  warmed  by  a  heart 
that  feels  the  needs  of  men,  and  glows  with 
the  greatness  of  the  Father's  purpose  for 
them," —  "Our  Father,  thy  will  be  done." 

This  petition  includes  every  good  for 
every  son  of  man,  —  all  high  enterprise 
and  all  great  goals.  All  justice,  all  truth, 
all  beauty,  all  merciful  ministry,  are  here 
enclosed  —  all  the  triumphs  of  science,  of 
literature,  of  art,  of  music,  of  philanthropy, 
of  highest  spiritual  endeavor  —  the  vision 
of  the  city  beautiful,  the  city  honest,  the 
city  serving,  the  vision  of  a  redeemed  hu- 
manity sharing  in  the  very  life  of  God. 
For  all  these  are  but  expressions  of  men's 


lyo  RELIGION   AS   LIFE 

God-given  natures.  All  this,  then,  we 
may  believe  this  prayer  means  for  Jesus. 

The  history  of  religion  —  nay,  the  his- 
tory of  humanity  itself  —  may  be  said  to 
be  the  history  of  the  varying  conceptions 
of  the  will  of  God ;  for  religion  grows  with 
growth  in  that  conception,  and  religion,  we 
may  not  forget,  is  life's  supreme  factor. 
We  are  to  consider,  therefore,  in  the  second 
place,  how  Christ's  thought  of  this  prayer, 
with  his  clear  sense  of  a  God  whose  purpose 
includes  all  good  for  all  men  in  both  lives, 
at  once  confronts  and  challenges  and  tran- 
scends all  those  wavering,  inadequate  con- 
ceptions of  the  will  of  God  that  have  marked 
the  progress  of  the  centuries.  In  line  with 
one  of  the  deepest  trends  of  our  own  time, 
we  need  to  put  the  will  in  the  foreground 
and  to  confront  these  defective  interpreta- 
tions of  the  will  of  God  with  Christ's  own 
thought  in  this  prayer. 

Religion  is,  therefore,  first  of  all,  no 
matter  of  ceremonial,  of  ritual  distinctions 
of  clean  and  unclean,  no  pleasing  of  an  ar- 
bitrary God  with  sacrifices  and  offerings, 
as  most  pre-Christian  religions  thought,  — ■ 
no   external   observance   of   any  kind.     A 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  LIFE  171 

holy  God  of  character  can  find  satisfaction 
in  nothing  short  of  inner  obedience.  The 
Father  finds  dehght  only  in  the  filial  spirit. 
Even  the  Old  Testament  prophet  knew 
that  "to  obey  is  better  than  sacrifice." 
It  has  been  a  long  and  toilsome  evolution 
of  humanity,  this  sloughing  off  of  the 
ceremonial  conception  of  religion ;  and 
many  are  still  in  bondage  to  it.  But  when 
Jesus  put  in  the  hearts  of  men  the  prayer 
to  a  God  revealed  in  his  own  life,  "Our 
Father,  thy  will  be  done,"  all  external  ob- 
servances slipped  away  from  essential  re- 
ligion, as  having  all  their  significance,  only 
as  being  absolutely  insufficient  expressions 
of  an  inner  life.  "Thy  will  be  done"  in 
the  inner  life. 

Religion,  again,  is  no  merely  beautiful 
thing  for  aesthetic  admiration,  as  Hellenic 
thought,  and  many  a  modern  echo  of  it 
have  tried  to  conceive.  Its  life  is  beautiful, 
but  with  a  beauty  no  mere  aesthete  can  ever 
take  in.  For  it  is  beautiful  with  the  glory 
of  the  most  majestic  of  all  possible  aims  — 
those  of  the  will  of  God  —  aims  that  do 
not  balk  at  precise  and  prosaic  manifes- 
tations on  earth,  and  do  not  stop  short  of 


172  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

the  sweep  of  the  ages.  ''Thy  will  be  done 
as  in  heaven,  so  on  earth." 

Religion,  too,  is  no  merely  true  doctrine 
for  intellectual  apprehension,  as  Greek  and 
Roman  philosopher  or  orthodox  or  rational- 
istic modern  would  have  it.  Its  teaching 
is  true,  but  with  a  truth  no  mere  scholar 
can  ever  reach ;  for  its  truth  is  the  truth 
bom  of  experience  and  wrought  out  in  the 
laboratory  of  life.     ''Thy  will  be  done." 

And  religion  is  no  mere  seeking  of  mystical 
experiences,  either  that  half  swoon  and  half 
ecstasy,  for  which,  as  Nash  says,  the  Jew 
forsook  his  prophets  with  their  social  vision, 
and  the  Greek  his  philosophers  with  their 
rational  pursuit  of  truth.  The  sweep  of 
religion's  emotional  life  is,  indeed,  widest 
of  all,  just  because  it  has  to  do  with  the 
unsearchable  riches  of  the  divine  personality. 
But  its  prayer  is  not,  "Give  me  great 
emotions, ' '  but ' '  Thy  will  be  done. ' '  Under- 
neath the  thought  of  that  will  of  God  lie, 
it  is  true,  peace  and  joy  unfathomable, 
and  nowhere  else  to  be  found ;  but  the 
emotion  is  incidental  to  the  will,  not  in- 
dependent of  it,  or  an  end  in  itself.  "Our 
Father,  thy  will  be  done." 


THE   ESSENCE   OF   LIFE  173 

Religion,  once  more,  is  no  practice  of 
ascetic  self -mortification,  as  the  monk, 
ancient  or  medieval,  thought  it.  It  is 
good  tidings.  It  rejoices  in  life.  It  aims 
to  bring  continually  larger  life.  It  does 
pay  gladly  the  price  of  unhesitatingly 
subordinating  all  lesser  goods,  for  it  knows 
the  cost  of  high  attainment,  even  in  small 
enterprise ;  and  it  takes  joyfully  what  so 
comes  in  the  greatest  endeavors.  But  it 
seeks  ''the  life  that  is  life  indeed,"  in  union 
with  the  will  of  God.  And  it  knows  that 
whatever  self -discipline,  whatever  surrender 
of  lesser  goals  are  involved  in  that  will, 
that  will  of  God  alone  is  largest  life.  There- 
fore, not  in  abandonment  of  life,  but  in 
secure  possession  of  it,  it  prays,  "Our  Father, 
thy  will  be  done." 

Nor  is  religion  an  idle  longing  for  heaven, 
or  an  awaiting  for  some  miraculous  de- 
liverance from  heaven,  as  the  ascetic  and 
world-weary  have  ever  tended  to  think. 
It  knows,  indeed,  its  need  of  a  goal  more 
than  earthly.  Its  vision  is  age-long,  and 
it  stays  its  soul  with  the  immortal  hope, 
but  it  is  the  hope  of  a  life  of  ethical  content. 
It  cannot,  therefore,  be  indifferent  to  the 


174  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

triumph  of  righteousness  right  here  on 
earth.  It  faces  the  earthly  Hfe,  therefore, 
in  no  despairing,  pessimistic  mood.  Earth, 
too,  is  a  room  in  the  Father's  house ;  his 
will  is  here  too,  to  reign.  To  that,  every 
child  of  the  Father  is  pledged.  As  in 
heaven,  so  on  earth,  thy  will  be  done. 

The  prayer  of  Jesus  means,  too,  that 
religion  is  no  bare  adoption  of  abstract 
ethical  principles,  as  Stoic  philosophy  con- 
ceived. It  is  the  great  contribution  of 
religion  that  it  is  able  not  only  to  unify  all 
ideals,  but  to  make  these  all,  living,  warm, 
tender  in  their  union  in  the  personal  will 
of  a  personal  God.  And  that  will,  in  the 
conception  of  Jesus,  is  a  Father's  will,  that 
says  to  each  child : 

O,  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here  ! 
Face,  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself  ! 
Thou  hast  no  power  nor  may'st  conceive  of  mine, 
But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  myself  to  love. 

''  Our  Father,  thy  will  be  done.'' 

And  conceived  even  as  response  to  a 
personal  will,  religion  is  not  something 
arbitrary  laid  upon  man  from  without, 
external  and  foreign  to  him,  as  the  Pharisee 


THE   ESSENCE   OF   LIFE  175 

in  all  generations  has  conceived.  God's 
will  is  laid  down  in  the  structure  of  man's 
very  being,  and  we  cannot  be  true  even  to 
ourselves,  and  say  "No"  to  him.  The 
deep,  far-reaching  questions  of  our  own 
time  are  driving  us  back  irresistibly  to  the 
thought  of  God  as  working  in  us.  It  is  as 
though  God  were  himself  saying  to  us,  in 
all  these  questions  concerning  miracle,  super- 
natural birth,  and  bodily  resurrection  of 
Jesus,  —  ''You  shall  not  believe  in  me  on 
any  of  these  external  grounds."  It  is 
Christ's  insistence  that  men  shall  follow 
him  not  because  of  the  signs,  but  for  what 
he  is  in  himself.  It  is  the  providential 
demand  of  our  own  time,  God's  own  voice 
to  us,  —  "You  must  have  an  inner  religion, 
if  you  are  to  have  one  at  all."  It  is  not  a 
light  error  in  Jesus'  thought,  this  laying 
the  whole  stress  upon  external,  marvelous 
sign ;  for  it  involves,  he  believes,  rejection 
of  the  highest  in  him ;  and  he  will  be  fol- 
lowed for  what  he  is,  not  for  marvels  that 
he  works.  To  our  generation,  even  as  to 
his  own,  he  seems  to  be  saying,  "There 
shall  no  sign  be  given  to  it."  And  by  this 
very  path,  perchance,  we  shall  find  our  way 


176  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

back  to  faith,  where  faith  now  is  difficult. 
For,  in  the  words  of  another,  ''You  can 
never  compel  moral  admiration  by  physical 
power;  but  you  can  understand  that  the 
lower  ranges  of  life  may  be  subservient  to 
one  whose  greatness  lies  in  the  highest,  — 
that  is,  in  the  moral  order  of  life."  Ex- 
ternal authority  has  its  undoubted  function 
in  the  history  of  the  race  and  of  the  indi- 
vidual. But  it  is  temporary  and  provisional 
always.  Its  end  is  the  doing  away  of  the 
need  of  itself,  for  it  seeks  the  establishment 
in  each  soul  of  an  inner  life  of  its  own. 
Authority  itself  means  nothing  where  it 
does  not  make  an  inner  appeal.  And, 
once  more,  therefore,  with  Jesus  we  pray 
to  the  Father  of  our  spirits,  whose  will  is 
in  our  very  being,  "Thy  will  be  done." 

And  finally,  religion  is  no  merely  negative 
aim  of  any  kind,  as  the  Pharisee  again  and 
all  mere  fighters  of  evils  have  often  been 
tempted  to  think,  but  the  fulfillment  of  a 
great  divine,  positive  will.  The  religious 
man  is  not  to  thank  God  that  he  is  not  as 
other  men  are.  The  history  of  mankind 
shows  all  too  plainly  appetites  so  dangerous 
as  easily  to  seem  best  extirpated  altogether. 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  LIFE  177 

Nevertheless,  it  is  no  emptied  soul  that  can 
satisfy  the  thought  or  desire  of  Jesus.  It 
is  not  mere  absence  of  evil,  but  the  kindling 
of  great  new  enthusiasms,  devotions,  asso- 
ciations, and  causes,  that  can  alone  fulfill 
the  will  of  God.  It  is  this  that  makes  the 
relation  of  Christ's  teaching  to  the  previous 
age  so  revolutionary.  He  sees  clearly  that 
this  new  spirit  of  rejoicing  sonship  cannot 
be  put  into  the  old  forms  —  the  new  wine 
into  the  old  bottles.  The  new  spirit  neces- 
sarily breaks  through  them,  if  it  is  really 
honest  and  true  to  itself.  Even  of  evil 
there  is  no  final  expulsion  but  by  the  new 
affection".  And  the  disciple  of  Jesus  must 
therefore  pray,  not  the  negative  prayer, 
''Empty  my  soul  of  evil,"  but  the  positive 
prayer,  ''Thy  will  be  done,"  —  the  prayer  for 
the  reign  of  God  within,  as  well  as  without. 

In  all  this,  Christ's  thought  of  rehgion 
as  union  with  the  will  of  God  is  able  to 
take  up  into  itself  every  element  of  truth 
in  all  these  inadequate  conceptions,  and 
yet  to  transcend  them  all.  There  is  fullness 
of  life  in  the  will  of  God,  as  Jesus  conceives 
it.     Here  is  the  essence  of  life. 

In   exact  line,   now,   with   Christ's   own 


178  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

thought,  we  men  of  the  modern  age  must 
enlarge  and  deepen  our  conception  of  the 
will  of  God,  if  we  are  to  meet  the  real  de- 
mands of  our  time.  For  certain  great  con- 
victions have  been  forcing  themselves  in 
upon  the  minds  of  men  in  this  modern 
age,  that  cannot  leave  our  religious  con- 
ceptions unaffected. 

We  live  in  a  world  enlarged  for  our 
thought  quite  beyond  the  possibility  of 
conception  by  earlier  ages :  enlarged  in 
the  infinite  spaces  of  the  revelations  of 
astronomy  ;  enlarged  in  the  mighty  reaches 
of  time,  measured  not  only  by  geological, 
but  by  physical,  research ;  enlarged  in 
perception  of  inner,  endless  energy,  mi- 
croscopic as  well  as  telescopic,  and  com- 
pelling our  admission  even  far  beyond  all 
possibility  of  vision.  We  find  ourselves 
living  not  less  in  a  vastly  larger  social 
environment,  wide  as  the  earth  —  every 
part  of  it  tributary  to  every  other,  every 
part  sharing  in  the  life  of  every  other  ; 
there  can  be  finally  no  exclusions.  A  man 
cannot  help  asking  himself  in  such  a  world, 
"Is  thy  God  adequate  to  this  enlarged 
universe?" 


THE  ESSENCE   OF   LIFE  179 

We  live,  too,  in  a  unified  world  :  unified, 
too,  beyond  all  possible  earlier  conception ; 
unified  in  the  thought  of  the  universal 
forces  of  gravity  and  magnetism ;  unified 
in  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of 
energy ;  a  world  that  acts  as  one  world,  as 
though  permeated  with  one  will.  It  is  so 
permeated.  For  our  time,  as  for  no  other, 
the  thought  of  unity  dominates.  The  world 
is  one,  past  our  denial.  Man  is  one,  in 
spite  of  his  seeming  duality.  Man  and 
the  world  are  akin,  and  man  is  the  micro- 
cosmus  in  a  deeper  sense  than  the  old 
Greek  philosopher  could  guess.  Man  and 
man  are  one  in  great  central  likenesses  back 
of  all  racial  differences.  And  man  and  God, 
too,  are  akin ;  and  our  key  to  the  under- 
standing of  God  is  to  be  found  within,  not 
without.  No  age  so  certainly  as  ours 
should  be  able  to  say  of  man,  with  the 
Psalmist,  ''Thou  hast  made  him  but  little 
lower  than  God,  and  crownest  him  with 
glory  and  honor."  Is  thy  God  adequate 
to  this  unified  world  ? 

Moreover,  whatever  changes  come  in  the 
great  conception  of  evolution,  mankind 
will  never  escape  again  from  the  idea  of  an 


i8o  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

evolving  world.  Physics,  biology,  embry- 
ology, psychology,  sociology,  make  it  im- 
possible for  us  to  forget  that  man  is,  in 
some  real  sense,  the  goal  of  the  whole  phys- 
ical universe,  containing  within  himself 
the  promise  of  endless  progress.  And  men 
have  dared  to  dream  that,  in  this  evolution, 
physical,  individual,  and  social,  they  could 
even  catch  the  trend  of  the  ages,  the  direc- 
tion of  the  mighty  ongoing  of  God's  pur- 
poses. Is  thy  God  adequate  to  this  evolv- 
ing world  ? 

Once  more,  with  the  emphasis  of  the 
whole  of  modern  science  on  the  conception 
of  law,  men  look  in  upon  themselves  and 
out  upon  the  universe  with  other  eyes. 
For  the  perception  of  law  means  discern- 
ment of  the  ways  of  the  universe ;  means, 
therefore,  insight  into  its  secrets  and  power 
to  use  its  exhaustless  energies.  It  means 
insight  into  economic  and  social  as  well  as 
natural  laws,  into  laws  of  personal  relation, 
into  the  modes  of  the  activity  of  God 
himself.  The  idea  of  law  brings,  thus, 
the  glorious  promise  of  world-mastery  and 
self-mastery  and  of  conquest  of  our  high- 
est ideals  —  hope  hitherto  unimagined.     Is 


THE   ESSENCE   OF   LIFE 


i«i 


thy  God  adequate  to  this  great  world  of 
law? 

We  men,  thus,  of  the  modem  time,  who 
live  in  this  enlarged  world,  in  this  unified 
world,  in  this  evolving  world,  in  this  law- 
abiding  world,  are  forced  to  enlarge  our 
conception  of  God  and  of  his  will,  if  we 
have  not  already  done  so,  to  match  this 
greater  vision  of  the  world  and  of  men. 
For  we  shall  not  long  believe  in  a  God  who 
is  not  greater  than  his  world. 

When,  then,  we  think  of  the  enlarged 
world  of  our  time,  we  shall  not  be  able  to 
make  the  measure  of  the  will  of  God  petty 
projects  of  any  kind  or  order.  Here  is 
reason  for  hope. 

When  we  think  of  the  unified  world  so 
necessary  to  our  modem  thought,  we  shall 
not  be  able  to  doubt  that  the  will  of  God 
cannot  be  shut  up  to  small  fragments  of  life 
or  of  the  race,  but  must  be  inclusive  of  all 
goods,  and  of  all  men,  and  consistent 
throughout.     Here  is  reason  for  hope. 

When  we  think  of  the  mighty  evolving 
world,  in  the  midst  of  which  we  see  ourselves 
placed,  we  cannot  but  believe  that  the  will 
of  God  is  in  it,  working  out  great  purposes 


i82  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

that  we  can  at  least  dimly  discern,  and  in 
which,  intelligently  and  triumphantly,  we 
may  share.     Here  again  is  hope. 

And  when  we  think  of  the  will  of  God, 
laid  down  in  the  laws  of  nature  and  of  human 
nature,  we  find  it  no  longer  possible  to 
think  of  him  as  mere  onlooker  in  the  drama 
of  life ;  since  he  is  sharing  in  our  very  life, 
and  we  in  his.  For,  in  another's  words, 
''Even  the  agony  of  the  world's  struggle 
is  the  very  life  of  God.  Were  he  mere 
spectator,  perhaps  he  too  would  call  life 
cruel.  But,  in  the  unity  of  our  lives  with 
his,  our  joy  is  his  joy,  our  pain  is  his." 
Here  too  is  hope,  great  and  abiding. 

These  convictions,  thus,  of  our  modem 
scientific  age  may  help  us  to  the  largeness 
of  the  measure  of  the  meaning  which  Jesus 
—  and  Paul  after  him  —  put  into  this 
thought  of  the  will  of  God.  Under  these 
convictions,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  the 
ambitions  of  men  to-day  have  taken  on  a 
titanic  quality  that  he  must  be  quite  blind 
who  does  not  see :  financial  and  economic 
enterprises,  world-wide  in  their  outreach ; 
social  projects  and  the  pursuit  of  social 
ideals  that  concern  not  one  nation  alone, 


THE  ESSENCE   OF  LIFE  183 

but  all  nations,  and  that  go  deep  down 
into  the  heart  of  all  living ;  missionary 
movements  that,  in  their  very  nature,  can- 
not be  carried  out  without  affecting  the 
entire  personal  and  social  life  of  every  race 
touched  thereby,  and  changing  the  very 
face  of  nature.  Every  profession  is  sharing 
in  this  enlarged  vision  of  positive  achieve- 
ment. The  physician  has  begun  to  dream 
of  a  race  physically  redeemed,  through  the 
triumphs  of  preventive,  not  merely  re- 
medial, medicine.  The  lawyer  is  beginning 
to  think  he  need  be  no  mere  attorney,  but 
a  servant  of  the  public  weal,  put  in  trust 
with  the  great  heritage  of  law.  Every 
calling  feels  that  it  must  more  and  more 
think  of  itself  as  a  social  servant,  justified 
by  nothing  less.  We  seem  to  ourselves  to 
be  just  awaking  out  of  sleep,  and  out  of 
dull  lassitude  of  will.  Now  we  see  what 
life  means.  We  live  in  an  infinite  world, 
and  in  that  world  we  have  our  part  to  play. 
We  live  in  a  unified  world,  and  just  on  that 
account  we  may  work  effects  wide  as  the 
universe  of  God.  We  live  in  an  evolving 
world,  the  direction  of  whose  progress  is 
not  wholly  hidden  from  us ;    and  into  the 


i84  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

very  plans  of  God,  therefore,  it  is  given  us 
to  enter.  We  live  in  a  law-abiding  world, 
in  which  God  himself  is  immanent ;  and 
he  works  in  us,  both  to  will  and  to  work  of 
his  own  good  pleasure.  Is  it  any  wonder 
that  the  ambitions  of  men  of  the  present 
day,  when  seen  thus  in  the  large,  seem  to 
dwarf  all  previous  aims  of  common  men? 
We  build  again,  and  with  eager  hope,  our 
heaven-scaling  tower,  but  now  on  founda- 
tions laid  by  God  himself;  and  the  con- 
fused tongues  give  promise  of  changing 
into  a  higher  harmony  in  the  unity  of  our 
wills  with  the  will  of  God.  Now,  one  can- 
not so  see  these  mightily  enlarged  ambitions 
of  men  without  a  great  deepening  of  this 
always  sufficient  prayer,  ''Our  Father,  who 
art  in  heaven,  thy  will  be  done,  as  in 
heaven,  so  on  earth." 

But  in  order  that  into  that  prayer  we 
may  put  ourselves  with  confidence  and  hope, 
there  must  underlie  it  that  threefold  as- 
sumption of  Jesus :  of  the  personal  will  of 
the  Heavenly  Father,  of  the  heavenly  life, 
and  of  the  will  of  God  pledged  to  the  bring- 
ing of  heaven  to  earth.  For  only  he  can 
see  thus  greatly  his  own  ambitions  who  is 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  LIFE  185 

able  to  gird  and  undergird  his  own  will 
by  faith  in  the  eternal  and  all-sufficient 
will  of  God.  He  must  know  he  attempts 
no  hopeless  task.  And  the  more  nearly 
men  approach  that  rational,  ethical  de- 
mocracy, which  seems  to  be  the  goal  of  all 
earthly  endeavor,  the  more  clearly  will  they 
see,  in  Nash's  words,  that  ''every  form  of 
polity  lays  a  certain  tax  upon  the  will. 
But  democracy  lays  the  heaviest  tax  of  all. 
The  vital  relationships  into  which  the  in- 
dividual should  enter  are  far  more  nimierous 
than  under  any  other  form.  And  with 
each  one  of  them  he  must  go  deeper.  So 
the  tax  levied  upon  the  earnest  will  is 
exceeding  heavy.  It  cannot  be  paid,  year 
in,  year  out,  and  paid  with  increasing 
gladness,  unless  the  individual  be  assured 
that  the  resources  of  eternal  good  are  at  his 
back.  And  this  certitude  only  possesses 
and  pervades  him  when  he  has  been  made 
whole  by  trust.  The  idea  of  God  given  to 
him  is  a  missionary  idea.  The  good  is 
forthputting,  or  it  is  nothing.  God  is  an 
infinite  missionary  force.  There  is  no  fate 
in  him  that  hinders  him  from  putting  forth 
his  best.     And  the  man  who  touches  Christ 


1 86  RELIGION  AS   LIFE 

and  is  touched  by  him  to  the  quick  becomes 
like  God,  a  missionary  force,  making  of 
himself  a  redeeming  energy  that  relates 
itself  to  the  energy  of  God,  as  a  man's 
right  hand  is  related  to  the  man.  Hence- 
forth there  is  no  fate  in  him,  nothing  which 
cannot  be  mobilized  and  put  in  the  field 
in  the  service  of  his  fellows." 

He  who  has  come  into  this  mighty  faith 
of  Christ's  in  the  eternal  personal  will  of 
the  Father,  is  evermore  capable  of  mighty 
convictions,  mighty  surrenders,  mighty 
endeavors.  And  in  this  identification  of 
his  purposes  with  God's  eternal  purpose,  it 
must  seem  to  him,  as  it  seemed  to  Paul, 
that  he  catches  a  glorious  vision  of  sons  of 
God,  come  for  the  first  time  into  their  true 
heritage  —  a  consummation  so  wonderful 
that  in  the  glory  of  it  all  the  rest  of  the 
universe,  animate  and  inanimate,  seems  to 
share.  ''The  whole  creation  groaneth  and 
travaileth  in  pain  with  us  until  now." 
"For  the  earnest  expectation  of  the  creation 
waiteth  for  the  revealing  of  the  sons  of 
God." 

Let  us  ask,  now,  one  further  question 
involved  in  this  thought  of  life  in  the  will 


THE   ESSENCE   OF   LIFE  187 

of  God.  What  would  be  the  natural  and 
inevitable  effect  upon  a  man's  own  inner 
life  of  steadily  and  whole-heartedly  tak- 
ing on  the  will  of  God  in  the  faith  and  spirit 
of  Jesus  ?  First  of  all,  the  man  whose  sole 
purpose  is  to  find  and  to  do  the  will  of  God, 
as  disclosed  in  the  laws  of  his  being  and  in 
the  fundamental  facts  and  personalities 
of  life ;  whose  whole  anxiety,  thus,  is  to 
know  the  truth ;  who  can  say  of  himself, 
"I  am  come,  not  to  do  mine  own  will,  but 
the  will  of  him  that  sent  me"  ;  —  that  man 
will  naturally  find  this  very  purpose  lifting 
him,  as  nothing  else  could,  above  personal 
prejudice  and  caprice.  This  will  be  true 
in  the  precise  degree  in  which  he  has  gen- 
uinely taken  on  that  purpose.  The  very 
attitude  of  mind  involved  tends  to  clear 
the  judgment,  to  sweep  away  befogging 
sophistries  and  subtleties,  and  to  make  it 
possible  to  give  a  judgment  according  to 
the  facts.  The  man  with  this  one  deter- 
mining purpose,  in  his  measure,  thus,  can 
truly  say,  ''As  I  hear,  I  judge:  and  my 
judgment  is  righteous ;  because  I  seek  not 
mine  own  will,  but  the  will  of  him  that 
sent  me."    He  is,  so,  on  the  normal  high- 


RELIGION  AS  LIFE 


road  to  the  knowledge  of  all  needful  truth. 
His  present  determination  to  be  utterly 
faithful  to  his  present  light  is  the  best 
possible  assurance  of  the  larger  light  to  come. 
''If  any  man  willeth  to  do  His  will,  he  shall 
know  of  the  teaching."  The  fourth  gospel, 
therefore,  naturally  represents  Jesus  as 
saying :  ''If  ye  abide  in  my  word,  then  are 
ye  truly  my  disciples ;  and  ye  shall  know 
the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you 
free." 

Not  only  does  this  single  all-absorbing 
purpose  to  do  the  will  of  God  help  the  man 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  truth ;  but  it  also 
affects  the  temper  of  his  life,  and  his  capac- 
ity for  work.  To  seek  solely  the  will  of 
God  gives  a  singular  singleness  and  sim- 
plicity to  a  life  and  makes  it  take  on  some- 
thing of  real  greatness.  For  the  utterly 
candid  soul  has  a  transparency  of  life  that 
seems  to  make  it  possible  for  the  world 
of  the  spirit  to  shine  through  it  with  con- 
vincing power.  Even  in  the  case  of  the 
greatest,  the  supreme  greatness  is  in  the 
spirit  of  the  service,  not  in  the  size  of  the 
task  assigned.  It  requires  the  domination 
of  a  great  purpose  to  make  any  life  truly 


THE   ESSENCE   OF   LIFE  189 

great,  and  there  is  no  purpose  so  great  as 
the  purpose  to  do  the  will  of  God.  Large 
capacity  for  work,  too,  is  a  natural  resultant, 
just  because  of  the  concentration  of  aim 
involved  in  the  thought  that  God  has  for 
me  now  just  one  thing  to  do,  and  because 
of  the  energizing  sense  of  God,  as  back  of 
all  one's  work  when  thus  undertaken. 
And  this  latter  faith  also  brings  relief  from 
anxious  responsibility.  When  one's  will 
is  genuinely  identified  with  the  will  of  God, 
he  can  leave  the  results  with  God.  As 
Cecil  says,  "Duties  are  ours,  events  are 
God's.  This  removes  an  infinite  burden 
from  the  shoulders  of  a  miserable,  tempted, 
dying  creature." 

As  surely,  too,  as  a  man's  life  can  be  no 
more  permanent  than  the  objects  to  which 
it  is  given,  and  as  surely  as  "the  world  pas- 
seth  away  and  the  lust  thereof,"  so  surely, 
on  the  other  hand,  ' '  he  that  doeth  the  will  of 
God  abideth  forever. ' '  God's  plan  is  an  eter- 
nal plan.  What  is  inwrought  there  abides. 
Nothing  conceivable  can  give  such  abiding 
worth  to  a  man's  life  as  that  he  shoiild  have 
identified  his  aims  with  the  eternal  purposes 
of  God.     How  else  can  one  be  said  to  have 


190  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

triumphed  in  life?  To  have  learned 
steadily  and  wholeheartedly  to  take  on 
the  will  of  God  in  the  faith  and  spirit  of 
Jesus  —  this  is  indeed  to  have  finished 
one's  work,  to  have  ''overcome,"  in  the 
highest  sense  of  that  great  word.  Jesus 
meant  to  make  possible  to  his  disciples  the 
clearness  of  judgment,  the  privilege,  the 
power,  the  rest,  the  freedom,  the  fruit- 
fulness,  the  greatness  and  the  triumph  of 
that  life. 

It  seems  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the 
whole  battle  of  the  race  has  been  for  knowl- 
edge of  the  will  of  God  and  for  obedience 
to  it.  The  very  meaning  of  education,  too, 
is  the  learning  of  that  will  in  the  laws  of 
one's  own  being,  and  of  the  world.  If  the 
line  of  thought  we  have  been  following  is 
justified  at  all,  the  race  has  achieved,  and 
education  is  finished,  in  just  the  proportion 
in  which  that  will  of  God,  in  all  its  majesty, 
is  known  and  obeyed.  This  —  and  this 
alone  —  is  to  have  found  oneself,  to  have 
found  one's  powers,  to  have  discovered  the 
possibilities  of  one's  world.  Whether  stu- 
dents have  recognized  it  or  not,  their  whole 
endeavor  for  a  true  education  has  been  this 


THE   ESSENCE  OF  LIFE  191 

prayer  to  the  God  of  their  lives  —  "Thy 
will  be  done." 

May  we  not  say  it  out,  say  it  boldly,  say 
it  largely,  say  it  with  reverent  but  mighty 
ambition,  say  it  with  joy  in  our  hearts, 
"Father,  thy  will  be  done"  ?  For  human 
Hps  can  frame  no  other  prayer  so  great, 
none  so  full  of  blessing,  of  achievement,  of 
peace,  of  rest,  of  joy,  of  eternal  hope. 

Doubtless,  some  hard  experiences  await 
us.  We  need  not  hesitate  plainly  to  say  so. 
We  should  hardly  think  any  enterprise 
worthy  of  our  steel  that  did  not  have  its 
risks,  its  difficulties,  its  obstacles,  that 
challenged  and  gave  worthy  employ  to  all 
our  powers.  We  mean  to  be  men  and 
women.  But  still  these  ills  are  all  by  the 
way,  incidents  and  means,  not  ends ;  and 
the  prayer  "Thy  will  be  done,"  we  may  be 
sure,  is  not  a  prayer  for  calamities,  but 
for  greatest  blessing. 

Doubtless,  submission  there  must  be  — 
hours  when  we  shall  feel  capable  only  of 
bare  submission  ;  yet  even  that  submission, 
when  with  cold  chill  hands  we  hold  still  to 
God,  will  prove  "not  a  weakening  denial  of 
self,   but    a    strengthening    affirmation    of 


192  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

self. ' '  For  the  prayer,  ' '  Thy  will  be  done, ' ' 
we  may  be  sure,  is  not  submission  to  an 
arbitrary  will  without  us,  but  the  assertion 
of  the  highest  self  within  us. 

Doubtless,  many  minor  plans  may  fail, 
and  we  may  know  in  them  the  bitterness 
of  defeat ;  but  in  the  greatest  purpose  we 
cannot  be  defeated  except  by  our  own  con- 
sent ;  for  we  may  take  on  God's  purpose, 
and  share  in  his  triumph.  The  prayer, 
"Thy  will  be  done,"  becomes  thus  no 
longer  a  plaintive  cry,  but  a  jubilant, 
triumphant  note.  For  back  of  the  prayer 
lies  the  triumphant  conviction  voiced  in  the 
crusades,  *'  God  wills  it."  For  it  is  a  prayer 
for  the  triumph  of  God's  loving  purpose  in 
us  and  in  all  men,  a  dedication  of  ourselves 
to  the  consummation  of  his  mighty  plans 
on  earth  and  in  heaven,  dedication  to  the 
magnificent  sharing  in  the  infinite  purposes 
of  God  himself,  ''whose  service  is  perfect 
freedom." 

I  live  in  triumph,  Lord,  for  thou 
Hast  made  thy  triumph  mine. 

We  are  to  dare  to  believe  in  the  splendor 
of  the  plans  of  God.     We  need  not  doubt, 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  LIFE  193 


as  Browning  suggests  in  his  Easter  Day, 
that  far  beyond  all  the  exhaustless  beauty 
of  nature,  past  all  the  wealth  of  art,  past 
all  the  reach  of  "circling  sciences,  philos- 
ophies and  histories,"  past  even  all  tender 
ministries  of  human  love,  stretches  the 
reach  of  the  will  of  God.  These  all  are  but 
the  glories  of  the  earth,  God's  antechamber. 

The  wise,  who  waited  there,  could  tell 
By  these,  what  royalties  in  store 
Lay  one  step  past  the  entrance  door. 

We  are  brought,  thus,  to  what  sometimes 
seems  to  me  the  deepest  of  our  modem 
hymns,'  just  because  it  sounds  so  insistently 
the  note  of  larger  life,  —  of  hope  and 
triumph  in  the  will  of  God : 

0  Love,  that  wilt  not  let  me  go, 
I  rest  my  weary  soul  in  Thee ; 

1  give  Thee  back  the  life  I  owe, 
That  in  Thine  ocean  depths  its  flow 

May  richer,  fuller  be. 

O  Light,  that  folio  west  all  my  way, 

I  yield  my  flickering  torch  to  Thee ; 
My  heart  restores  its  borrowed  ray, 
That  in  Thy  sunshine's  blaze  its  day 
May  brighter,  fairer  be. 


194  RELIGION  AS  LIFE 

0  Joy,  that  seekest  me  through  pain, 
I  cannot  close  my  heart  to  Thee ; 

1  trace  the  rainbow  through  the  rain, 
And  feel  the  promise  is  not  vain 

That  mom  shall  tearless  be. 

0  Cross,  that  liftest  up  my  head, 

I  dare  not  ask  to  fly  from  Thee ; 

1  lay  in  dust  life's  glory  dead, 

And  from  the  ground  there  blossoms  red 
Life  that  shall  endless  be. 

No  goal  can  be  greater  than  that  of 
sharing  in  the  Hfe  of  God.  Here  is  the 
essence  of  Hfe. 


'  I  *HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements 
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BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

The  Moral  and  Religious  Challenge  of 
Our  Times 

By  henry  CHURCHILL  KING 

President  of  Oberlin  College.    Author  of  "  The  Ethics  of  Jesus," 
"The  Laws  of  Friendship,"  etc.,  etc. 

Oo^^,  i2mo,  $/.jo  net;  by  mail,  $1.62 

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The  Ethics  of  Jesus 


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"An  original,  able  and  stimulating  discussion."  —  Biblio- 
theca  Sacra. 

"A  real  contribution  to  the  literature  of  ethics."  —  Boston 
Transcript. 

"  It  is  the  chief  value  of  this  book  that  the  lay  reader  will 
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The  Laws  of  Friendship,  Human  and 
Divine 

Haverford  Library  Lectures 
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"  By  his  spiritual  intentions,  his  apt  illustrations,  and  gen- 
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Rational  Living 

Some  Practical  Inferences  from  Modern  Psychology 
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Reconstruction  in  Theology 

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The  Seeming  Unreality  of  the 
Spiritual  Life 

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materialism.'"  —  Boston  Advertiser. 

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training  and  the  revival  is  blind  to  the  wider  meaning  of  his 
ministry." —  Christiaft  Advocate. 


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